Filatov House (Samarkand Wine Museum)

Dmitry Filatov, a retired Russian officer, came to Central Asia in 1865 as a supplier to the army, and after three years in Tashkent settled in Samarkand. In 1868 he started a small winery there and tested about 40 grape varieties brought from Europe, while also using local ones. In 1883 his Biishti wine, named after a local grape whose name means "paradise", won a gold medal at an international exhibition in Paris.

When Soviet power came Filatov had to leave, but he hid his best wines in the cellars, where they were found decades later during repairs. That collection is now kept in the winery's museum, which with a tasting room occupies his former house, its courtyard and gate posts, on Mahmud Koshgari Street.

• Wines hidden in the cellars and found decades later
• A tasting room in a 19th-century merchant's house
• The story of the 1883 Paris gold medal