Why Putin Hates This Wine Shop

And you'll love it!

A recent trip to London and pilgrimage to posh Mayfair confirmed what is still for me the best wine shop in the English-speaking world-- despite attempts by Putin’s hired goons to burn it down.

When Hedonism Wines opened in 2012, it made some of the biggest statements about wine anywhere.

There was the LED-lit wall of Chateau d’Yquem vintages spanning two centuries, the biggest formats of great wines anywhere—some that could be not lifted by a single human—stocked on the chilled lower floor. There was the all-somm. staff—helpful but not intrusive or even snobby.

Of course, Vlad doesn’t drink much and loathes traditional Western European wine producing countries as well as the U.K. But that’s not why he hates this place.

In the tasting area you could open a bottle or get an enomatic pour of legendary wine you’d never tried, and put a vinyl disk on the turntable. But though Putin hates lots of pop Music (especially Pussy Riot, Punk, Rap) this is not why he hates this address.

The light-filled 7,000 square feet contains about 10,000 selections, and if they don’t have it, they’d work to get it for you.

There was spectacle in the Sina Qua Non room where theatrical arms, claws and other appendages cradled the SQN bottles.

And there is nothing condescending about the staff, and for all the service you get the prices were no more than anywhere else for your Tuesday night Sauv. Blanc. The retail environment was – and is—so well run and welcoming it makes the rest of the world feel sub-par or Soviet.

But Putin doesn’t hate it for that. Putin hates it because Hedonism’s creator and owner is Russian dissident in exile Yevgeny Chichvarkin, who I interviewed in 2014.

Chichvarkin, who made his fortune after the collapse of the Soviet Union by quitting business school and opening cellular telephone shops, fled Russia with his family in 2008 after pissing off some of the wrong people. He told me he would like to return to Russia when Putin is dead or in prison.

Meanwhile, Chichvarkin, a supporter and friend of the Russian anti-corruption dissident Alexei Navalny (who was fatally poisoned in a Russian prison in 2021,) makes no secret of his views. A vocal critic of the Ukraine war, he reportedly personally drove a truck to Ukraine full of medical supplies.

And as we know, dictators don’t take criticism constructively.

Hedonism made minor headlines last summer after a plot was uncovered by British authorities against Chichvarkin and Hedonism. It came out during the trial and convictions of a group of petty criminals hired by Russia’s Wagner Group in the 2024 arson of a Ukraine-connected warehouse.

Led by a 20-year-old Gatwick Airport janitor and drug dealer, the group was caught before it could carry out more arson including burning Hedonism and Chichvarkin’s Michelin-starred restaurant, Hide, to the ground. The plans, dictated by Russian handlers over Telegram, also called for kindnapping Chichvarkin and delivering him back to Russia – presumably not to host wine tastings there.

Chichvarkin is a man of conviction and a down-to-earth manner. That’s threatening to Russian power.

In wine, he makes no pretense about his taste. He told me his own palate had been scorched by vodka, and so he hires people with good palates to curate for him.

The impetus for Hedonism came when Chichvarkin was shopping around London, to buy a few cases of his favorite Rioja, Bodegas Roda’s Cirsion.

At Mayfair’s historic Berry Bros. & Rudd, he was told they didn’t stock it.

“But my friends and I drink a lot of this wine,” he explained. “A lot.”

Sorry, he was told.

With that, he vowed to build London’s best shop right in the neighborhood. He did. He also commissioned the world’s largest bottle of Cirsion (27 liters of 2010).

There are lots of lessons in Hedonism. About wine, about communication and retail. And about the price of freedom. And the fact that it puts a cork up Putin’s ass makes it doubly worth the trip.

Chichvarkin in 2014 (R. Camuto)