60 Minutes - 11/26/2023: Rise, Sealand, Ancient Vines

Episode Date: November 27, 2023

As Ukrainian families grieve the losses of their loved ones in Russia’s continued conflict, correspondent Scott Pelley joins a group of widows and children of the war on a mountain climb in the Austrian Alps, a journey of recovery and resilience. Welcome to Sealand. To enter, Jon Wertheim sat on a backyard swing and was winched over the North Sea. If you think entering Sealand is peculiar, wait until you hear its story. A country the size of West Virginia offers more than 40 varieties of wine, each with a tongue-twisting name from vines centuries old. Sharyn Alfonsi visits the country of Georgia. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want one more blessing to count this weekend, meet Nathan Schmidt's Camp of Climbers. Their mothers are widows of the war in Ukraine, who gambled that a week of challenge in the Alps could mend their broken hearts. You can't hear the sounds of war here. You just close your eyes and you feel like you can fly. Enter some countries you arrive in style. Here, you arrive in what's basically a backyard swing hoisted by a crank 60 feet above

the North Sea. And if you're wondering about the safety regulations, yeah, us too. Then again, when you are a sovereign nation, you, by definition, set your own rules. That's a hell of a way to get into a country. The only way to travel. Welcome to Sealand, a monarchy that declared its independence in 1967. Just wait till you hear this story. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker.

I'm Sharon Alfonsi. I'm John Wertheim. I'm Cecilia Vega. I'm Nora O'Donnell. I'm Scott Pelley. Those stories and more tonight on this special 90-minute edition of 60 Minutes. Why do fintechs like Float choose Visa? As a more trusted, more secure payments network,

Visa provides scale expertise and innovative payment solutions. Learn more at visa.ca slash fintech. A bus filled with widows of war and their children left Ukraine recently bound for the Austrian Alps. They'd been invited to a charity summer camp hosted by Nathan Schmidt, an American Marine who knows all too well the bereavement of war. Mountain climbing was Schmidt's path to recovery from three combat tours in Iraq. And so when Vladimir Putin launched his attack on an innocent people, Schmidt offered Ukraine what seemed like an impossible hope, that in only six days in the Alps he could teach grieving families to rise. The journey to an Austrian hotel ended at 3 in the

morning after 45 hours on the road. So the trip already felt like a mistake to widows who packed enough skepticism to last the week. Their husbands died defending Ukraine, among the estimated 70,000 Ukrainian soldiers killed. Time stopped for Natalia Zaremba and her two young boys. She told us, I think they still don't believe what happened. Just like me, they're still waiting for Daddy to come home from work. For Daddy to fly home. To 8-year-old Ilya and 5-year-old Andrey, who imagined mastering the air like their dad. Mikhailo Zaremba was a Navy pilot, shot down May 2022 in the unprovoked invasion of his home. He loved Ukraine, so he gave his life for Ukraine.

What is your hope for this trip? I want to find strength for myself to be able to bring my children up, to bring our children up. I want to find the strength to not let my husband down and to give our children a good future." Thirteen widows and 20 children had come to Austria from Mykolayiv, a city bombed by the Russians for 260 days.

The bereaved families traveled 1,300 miles on faith to meet a stranger still struggling to heal from his own war. Glory to Ukraine! Vokranja! Vokranja! Vokranja! Nathan Schmidt, Naval Academy graduate, Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, led shouts of glory to Ukraine at the third summer camp hosted by his small charity, the Mountain Seed Foundation. It comes from the Bible. It was, you know, with faith the size of a mustard seed, one can move mountains. We're not a religious organization,

but that faith, that faith in something bigger, that faith in self, and if you can reinforce that faith, we and you can move mountains. What do you hope these families have when they return to Ukraine? We teach about the significance of the rope in mountaineering. The rope signifies community, it signifies team. You're never alone on the rope. It also signifies courage.

Because when you're on the rope, that means you're climbing a mountain. And courage doesn't mean that you're not afraid. It actually means that you are afraid and you're going to overcome that fear. There would be plenty of fear to overcome because ultimately this was his goal, to lead children on the last leg of a climb to the peak of Mount Kitschsteinhorn at more than 10,000 feet. The first steps to the summit began with training for the kids, ages 5 to 17. For their moms, there were daily group therapy sessions, and every day of the camp would raise the challenge for both.

We're going to trust ourselves, the main thing. We're going to trust our equipment, and we're going to trust the team that we're with. The team of professional guides and other volunteers included Dan Knosson. Knosson was Schmidt's Naval Academy classmate. As a Navy SEAL in 2009, he lost his legs in Afghanistan. He's a three-time Paralympian, but he'd never climbed since his injury. The first days of training looked dangerous.

Ready, three, two, one. No, stop! Stop! But there was always an expert on the rope. That's a little late. One professional guide for every four children who eased the tension slowly for kids including 14-year-old Miroslav Kupchenkov. Now just lean back. Lean back, totally trust. No.

You can't. You can't. I can't. You can't. I can't. Of course you can. Miroslav, his adult sister, and their mother, Natalia, lost Oleksandr Kupchenkov, a 53-year-old career soldier.

Natalia told us, he was the man I wanted to spend my whole life with. He was the best at everything. Wonderful husband, wonderful dad. People loved him. Kupchenkov was hit by a Russian missile March 2022 as he was running ammunition to his pinned-down soldiers. He would never go back, only forward. And Miroslav discovered in repelling, going back is going forward, and terror was just one step before triumph. That's it. There you go. Super.

As the children learned the ropes, the moms seemed to be near the end of theirs. It will be hard for you to hear this. They were led by clinical psychologist Amit Orin, with translation by Irena Prihochko, the charity's Ukrainian co-founder. Amit Orin is an assistant professor at the Yale School of Medicine. The way I approach this group of people is not in looking at their trauma. It's in looking at their strengths.

And what strengths are you finding? Capacity for love, honesty. These are the strengths that they're finding. All I do is take a flashlight, illuminate inside them, and let them see and remember who they are. But Svetlana Milinchuk, on the left, didn't see the light. She didn't believe in breakthroughs. She brought her daughter Miroslava while her adult daughter stayed home.

Svetlana lost her husband, Yuri, a civilian building inspector who volunteered the day after Putin invaded. Svetlana mixed homemade explosives for the troops as her husband sent text messages from the front. Svetlana told us, Pictures started coming in. Good morning, darling, with a photo of a flower taken right from the trench. It was spring already. Right from the trench.

The photos thrilled her. Because Yuri had always worked too much at the expense of the family, she thought. But after the invasion, family was all he cared about. His revelation lifted their lives. Then he was dead. And her rage is almost like blindness. I became very distant and angry, and I kept all the sorrow inside. I didn't share it.

Nathan Schmidt was keeping his sorrow inside when, in 2019, a friend invited him on a climbing trip. Schmidt wasn't a mountaineer. He's afraid of heights. To him, the idea sounded so difficult and frightening. It might just have the force to break his grief. Yeah. You know, I spent the Naval Academy preparing myself for war, and nothing can prepare yourself for war. In 2004, Schmidt was a 24-year-old first lieutenant who dreamed of leading Marines. He landed in Fallujah on the eve of the bloodiest battle of the entire Iraq war. Two weeks after arriving at Camp Fallujah, I lost my teacher, who was a mentor of mine at the Naval Academy.

Killed? Yeah. The rocket struck the office. I was the second one in the room. And it was the first time I had ever seen anyone die in such a way. And it was my teacher. And that established a crack in me that had to be healed in another way that took years and years to heal. The problem was that that was the first of many cracks.

I lost one of our Marines that was in my unit a month later. I then had my friend lose his leg. I took over his team. A few days after that, I lost my analyst in the gun turret of our vehicle. By the end of November, the unit that I was with, which is a great unit, 3-1, was combat ineffective. We had lost over 20% of our unit, either injured or killed. And that was his first tour. He fought in Iraq for three years. Who were you after that third tour?

I thought in my mind that I was the strongest. But in reality, I was the weakest. I was strong physically. I could do as many pull-ups as you asked me to do. I could run. But I was broke. And, you know, those cracks, they take a lifetime to heal. You spend this week doing what you can to heal these families. And I wonder how much of that is healing you. You. It's huge. This program... has healed me in ways I...

can't even describe, and I feel sometimes I get selfish. But you're right. You're right. It works. And I'm not sure why. Maybe it works. Because the children and mothers who arrived on the bus will not be the same people who return to Ukraine. No one's quite the same after scaling a wall like this.

When we come back, teaching the bereaved to rise. Sometimes historic events suck. But what shouldn't suck is learning about history. I do that through storytelling. History That Doesn't Suck is a chart-topping history-telling podcast chronicling the epic story of America, decade by decade. Right now, I'm digging into the history of incredible infrastructure projects of the 1930s, including the Hoover Dam, the Empire

State Building, the Golden Gate Bridge, and more. The promise is in the title, History That Doesn't Suck, available on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. Nathan Schmidt's week-long summer camp for bereaved Ukrainian children and their mothers began with training in the Austrian Alps. Then serious work began, the kind of challenge that might rise to a revelation. The Hohe Thuan National Park embraces some of the highest peaks in the Austrian Alps and a feat of engineering. The Muserboden Dam would be the first big challenge for the 13 widows and their

20 children. A zip line flew them to the concrete face, where they found a steel cable to clip their harnesses to. Footholds were set across the span about two and a half football fields wide. The children and moms literally could not fall. And yet, the Muserboden Dam remained 32 stories of doubt. Natalia Zaremba did not like the measure of it. The Russians had killed her husband, the father of her two boys. Was this risk foolish? Why do you put them on this dam?

We put them on this dam because we want them to confront discomfort. We want them to confront their fears. Nathan Schmidt co-founded the Mountain Seed Foundation charity. We met in the 700 square mile park where the dam, finished after World War II, is a tourist attraction for rock climbers. What makes this safe in your view? First off, we have professional mountain guides. The second thing is all the equipment that we have. They train throughout the week on it.

They know how to use the equipment. And then particularly the little children, they are also short-roped into a guide. So there's multiple layers of security for them. And so with all that security, the challenge was not so much under their feet as under their skin. Miroslav Kukchenkov, who told us his late father never went back, always forward, was following his father's lead. You know, in life, sometimes the thing that gets you through a difficult point is knowing that you've already done something more difficult. What difference do you see in them

when they reach the top? The sheer look of joy on their faces. It's hard to even comprehend, and we know that that will be a strong point for them when they go back to ukraine they will know that they've they've conquered this wall and they will they've conquered their own fears fears conquered by natalia zarimba who at the end of the climb was walking on air. She told us she came to Austria to find strength to raise her boys alone. Nice!

She said, it was something incredible. As soon as I stepped on the ground, the children ran to me, hugged me. There were no flowers there, so my older son gave me a branch from a bush. You know, I see you smiling, and I suspect there hasn't been a lot of that. I don't feel joy the way I used to. Wherever I am, no matter how good a time I'm having, it's hard knowing my husband could have been with us, but he's not. And even when I smile, the pain in my heart is very strong. The pain is strong, but maybe not invincible. Natalia was listening at the meetings,

and words of inspiration like those of Navy SEAL Dan Kanasin, were getting through. That bomb in Afghanistan took my legs, and I can't change that fact. The bomb in Afghanistan took my legs, and I can't change that fact. But ultimately, it has to be up to me to decide if it's going to take the rest of my life, too. Thank you all very much. Still, for others, especially Svetlana Malenchuk, words fell short. She had told us her husband sent photos of flowers from his trench until the Russians killed him. She said,

Life is a book that you read your whole life. When my husband died, I stopped turning the pages in the book. But opening a new chapter is what clinical psychologist Amit Oran had in mind. And so she took the widows to a storybook castle where she hoped to scale the walls of Svetlana Malenchuk. And I started to talk with her about castle walls. That we're going to see a castle where there are always very deep, tough, impenetrable walls. And that I thought that her face looked like that, that it was hard to see what's inside,

like this castle. And I brought them to a wall, a side wall of the castle, where there are teeny tiny windows. And I said to them, right now I think you're here at the bottom. And as you go up, you're able then to see three windows. I said, unless you open that window, you can't peer out and see the beauty around you. You're trapped. And ultimately what happened is several of the women stood there on the grass and opened up to each other. She was one of them.

It was choking you. It was choking you. It was choking you. The next day, after the group session, Svetlana had been thinking. She came up to me and said to me, The next day, after the group session, Svetlana had been thinking. She came up to me and said to me, it was a very painful conversation we had, and I made a decision. My anger was choking me, and I decided to let it go so I can breathe.

Congratulations. You've done hard work. I'm so happy for you. She has a long way to go. But she's understood that it's a choice at least. The few things she can control in this world is how open or closed she chooses to be in her own castle. You know, as you talk to the mothers, none of them expected what happened in February of 2022. The invasion. Losing their homes, in many cases. Losing their future, or at least their future being unknown.

And it's one of those moments in climbing where you look all around and you don't know where you're going to put your hand, and you don't know where you're going to put your foot. You don't know if you're going to be able to stay in that position or fall. This program is meant to show them the footholds and the handholds, to fill the cracks that they have too, and then lead their children back up the mountain.

On day five, one mountain remained. Nathan Schmidt took the first steps from a high tram station on an ascent to the peak of Mount Kitschteinhorn. It was a steep and icy 570 feet to the ultimate test of the camp. Like the dam earlier, there was a fixed cable to hook onto. But like the dam, glancing down looked fatal, and looking up, a cold, thin glare exposed hours of struggle. We followed Schmidt's lead and remembered what he told us about the rope we were on and its three lessons, community, courage. And the last thing is responsibility, and this is probably the most difficult one.

And that is when you're on the rope, you're responsible for those that are on the rope with you. When they're weak, you pull them up. When they are showing signs of fatigue, you encourage them. Look at me, Iman. Breathe in. Two, three, four. Hold. Two, three, four. Hold.

Two, three, four. We hope that when they go home, that they build their own communities. They add people to their rope. That they encourage them to face their fears and have courage. Courage lifted them 10,508 feet, a summit reached by everyone. Let's go, Dan! Including Nathan Schmidt's Naval Academy classmate, Dan Knosson, on his prosthetics. It was tough, but I'm happy to make it to the top, and it was great to do it with everyone.

Seeing the kids climbing gave me a lot of inspiration to keep pushing. Natalia Zaremba's kids pushed to the top. She had come to Austria to find strength within herself, but from the peak, she could see where that kind of strength truly comes from. We have something that bonds us more now, some new achievements which we experienced together and that taught us to be braver and stay together, because only together can we overcome this. Our strength, she said, will be from being together.

Also among the climbers at the summit was Miroslav Kupchenkov, who told us now he could do anything. What is your hope for them? My hope for them is that they can remember the achievement that they've had, and I also hope they can remember the stillness and the peace of these mountains. You can't hear the sounds of war here. You just close your eyes and you feel like you can fly. Even Svetlana Malinchuk took flight, rising to the summit and at last to the high, open windows of her castle.

I was screaming. To be honest, I was simply screaming. Having breathed in full lungs of air, I was screaming with my head up toward, I don't know, God? Nature? I don't know. I was just getting rid of all the negative. Has this helped you in some small way to heal? Oh, well, at least I managed to open the bag of my sorrows. To open their sorrows to the sky. Five days before, they clipped to a rope a string of broken souls. Now, they would return to the war, but this time, resurrected in strength and love and invincible hope.

What's better than a well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door. A well-marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. Okay, name that country. It's planted opposite Europe, sitting proudly on the other side of the North Sea. It's a monarchy that features its own currency, postage stamps, constitution, national anthem, love of tea, and a pair of handsome princes born two years apart. We speak of Sealand,

a crumb of real estate off the English coast that declared its independence in 1967, Sealand has a full-time population of one. It has a landmass the size of roughly two tennis courts. Its leading export might be the national mythology, a history of piracy, coups, counter-coups, rogues, and offshore internet schemes. It may make tiny Lichtenstein look like China by comparison, but by rights, Sealand is a sovereign nation. Join us as we compile some notes from a truly small island.

We can see Sealand over there by the way now. You see that? Oh, there she is. Yeah, yeah. On a starboard bow. Behold, the world's smallest state. It's a micronation in the extreme, a principality which sits, or stands, only seven miles off the coast of England. Its self-described reigning monarch is this guy, Prince Michael Bates.

Here we are. Yeah. A platform and a couple of concrete husks, and this is a state. Yeah. Enter some countries, you arrive in style. Here, you arrive in what's basically a backyard swing hoisted by a crank 60 feet above the North Sea. And if you're wondering about the safety regulations,

yeah, us too. Then again, when you are a sovereign nation, you, by definition, set your own rules. That's a hell of a way to get into a country. The only way to travel. On the plus side, there's no long line at the arrivals hall. I'm following you to passport control. Mike Barrington fills various roles and positions on Sealand.

Right now, it's immigration and customs. He also happens to be the only permanent resident. There you are, sir. So now I'm official. You are. Welcome to Sealand. It wasn't always named Sealand, and it was never intended to be a country. Originally called His Majesty's Ruff's Tower, it was a hastily constructed nautical fort, one of several the British set up in the North Sea during World War II. Equipped with anti-aircraft artillery, these forts were designed to prevent German bombing raids on London.

During the war, more than a hundred Royal Marines were crammed into these towers for months on end. Descending the seven-story towers, it feels and smells like a cross between a tree house and a diesel-soaked submarine. First up, the first-class bedroom suite. That's a nice one. Nice TV. Our claustrophobic tour continued downward.

We're underwater at this point. So we've still got a couple floors to go. You hear ships going past. You hear the propellers going around. Ding, ding, ding, ding. Like many countries, there's a national cathedral. Freedom of worship in the sea land. I think there's even the Quran here somewhere.

On the bottom floor, the jail. Two days in the brig, bread and water. I have to look at the sealant constitution and see what my rights are. Very limited. If you're wondering by now how this concrete island constitutes a country, stick with us here. This is Radio Caroline on 199. Back in the 1960s, these same waters played host to the burgeoning, unlicensed commercial radio business that operated on ships and old forts, what the British government called pirate radio. It was the time of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Kinks.

But the stodgy BBC, which had a monopoly on broadcasting in Britain, gave the rock bands just an hour of airtime a week. The younger set in Britain, millions of them, tuned their radio knobs to the pirate stations. In 1965, Prince Michael's father, Roy Bates, an enterprising, swashbuckling World War II veteran, commandeered a fort where another pirate station operated. It was the Wild West on the North Sea. The DJs may not be highly experienced, but they certainly pull their weight.

Bates set up Britain's first 24-hour outfit. He called it Radio Essex. You're in tune with Radio Essex broadcasting on 222 meters. We're doing a job that's needed. The public wants us to do the job, so do businesses. And I think while this demand is here, we'll remain in business. But not for long. The British government enacted a new law rendering all pirate radio stations illegal. Bates was forced to shut down, but true to his nature, he was something other than scared off. He just would not back down.

Form of surrender, if he had said, you know what, I'm out? He wouldn't know that word, surrender. I mean, no. Far from surrendering, Bates seized another fort, Ruff's Tower, which was outside UK territorial waters. Instead of restarting Radio Essex, he did something bolder still. On September 2nd, 1967, he declared it an independent state, Sealand, and declared himself its prince. It was his wife Joan's birthday.

And it was, of course, a hugely romantic gesture to make my mother a princess. In addition to taking you out to dinner, I'm going to make you a princess. He didn't take her out to dinner, but he just made her a princess, yeah. Prince Roy and Princess Joan, along with their two children, Michael and Penny, set up home on Sealand. The sheer novelty of their lifestyle was a constant source of amusement on the mainland. This newsreel is from 1969. The start of another day, even for the new royals, is no different than for millions of others, the request for a common cuppa. Mrs Bates, how is it possible to keep looking glamorous in conditions like these? It's no more difficult than anywhere else in the world.

We're quite comfortable here. We have all the things I want. Look, make-ups, brushes and things. At age 16, Penny was less convinced. It was freezing cold and it had no electricity. To flush the toilet, you'd have to chuck a bucket over the side, drop it down about 80 feet, pull it up and flush the toilet. That was your toilet? Yes. The Bates family had big ambitions to turn Sealand into a tax haven, a luxury island and casino. And they went all in on the trappings of statehood, fashioning a flag, stamps, currency, an anthem, even a national motto,

Imare Libertas, from the sea of freedom. As teens, Michael and Penny would spend months on Sealand, holding down the fort, as it were, firing off warning shots and tossing Molotov cocktails overboard to fend off periodic attempts of invasion from rivals and buccaneers. When the press eventually came out and took photographs, my father called me down and he said, Now look, he said, how many times have I told you, you do not hold a gun like that. You weren't holding the gun the right way.

And actually, if you look at the picture, the way I'm holding the guns is dreadful. Firmly settled on Sealand, the Bateses remained a nuisance to the British government. So much so, as a warning to the family, a team of royal engineers blew up a similar North Sea fort. At Sealand's National Archives, which doubles as Prince Michael's dining room table, we were shown declassified plans drawn up by the British Ministry of Defence to take Sealand by force. The following units are to be available to the execution of the operation. Royal Navy, two Wessex 5 helicopters, crafts from HM Naval Base Chatham, Portsmouth, Medway, and a clearance diving team. It's crazy, isn't it? But it wasn't just the British government that

wanted to dislodge the family. In August 1978, a band of rogue German and Dutch lawyers and diamond merchants launched a coup d'etat with designs of founding their own offshore casino. They arrived by helicopter with a film crew in tow, taking Prince Michael by surprise and then roughing him up. They tied my elbows together, my knees together, my feet together, my hands down to my knees, and they picked me up and one says to the other in German, let's chuck this bastard over the side, he's too much trouble. You're a full-on political prisoner right now. Sealand had fallen. After three days, Michael was released.

Did Michael and his father then return via helicopter, fully armed and flanked by a group of bruisers, to stage a successful counter-coup? Yes. Yes, they did. I jumped and landed, crashed in the middle of the Germans. A sauna shotgun hit the deck. Boom! And all the Germans went like that. They surrendered. That's it. You've reclaimed your principality.

Disarmed, the plotters were released, all except for one. His name was Putz, and he was made to clean the bathroom, make coffee, and imposed a fine for treason, $37,000. His imprisonment brought a German diplomat to Sealand. But if you have German emissaries coming here to try and negotiate the release of this prisoner, doesn't that imply that Sealand is a state that's having relations? Absolutely. It's de facto recognition, isn't it? It happened, yeah. This diplomatic visit was critical for the Bates family. An international treaty signed in the 1930s established four requirements for statehood.

One is recognition by another state. Sealand had already met the other tests. A government, check. A defined territory, check. And a permanent population, check, thanks to Michael Barrington. So what's your position here? Well, I do most of the engineering work,

electrically and whatever. Apparently, I'm head of homeland security. What are you protecting this place from? The British government or anybody else that decides to take us over. We're our country, after all. We're a small nation. You're ready to use weapons if you have to? If need be, yes. No hesitation. But in recent years, to keep Sealand afloat,

the Bates family has updated their pirate radio sensibilities for the times. In the early 2000s, they partnered with fringe Internet entrepreneurs who invested millions with designs of turning Sealand into an offshore data haven. Prince Michael's son, Prince James, showed us the old server room. We used to run things like gambling sites, porn sites. We had a few dubious people asking us to do things that we didn't really agree with. There was an organ transplant company like Human Organs that wanted to host out here, which my father was against. Gambling and porn is okay, but we draw a line at harvesting

human organs. Yes, exactly. That venture failed dismally. But today, James and his younger brother, Prince Liam, are still harnessing the power of the Internet. The Bates family won't disclose the size of the national debt or the yearly budget, but it is serviced through the online sale of noble titles. Become a lord or lady for $30. $600 will make you a Sealand Duke or Duchess. And people are buying these titles. What is that all about? I think it means so many things to so many different people.

Some people love the act of political defiance. Some people love the love story that ran through it with my grandma and grandpa. Some people love that, you know, David against Goliath. That national myth, the very idea of Sealand, has now far outgrown the country itself.

As for the House of Bates, well, Roy and Joan have passed on. And the rest of the lineage lives in the small English resort town of Southend-on-Sea. Princes James and Liam run a business harvesting cockles. Princess Penny runs a Botox clinic nearby. And seven years ago, Prince Michael married and welcomed a new princess, Mei Shi, a former artillery major in China's People's Liberation Army. Six decades after founding their private little country, the royal family remains committed to the bit. Is this the golden age for Sealand?

Hopefully. The British Navy rolled up tomorrow and said it's time to reclaim Sealand. How do you respond? Well, first of all, I'm sure they wouldn't. But if they did, I'd just get the best china out and make them a nice cup of tea. As Thanksgiving weekend draws to a close, there's still time for a toast on this extended edition of 60 Minutes. Stick around as Sharon Alfonsi brings us to the country of Georgia, which lays claim to 8,000 years of winemaking history,

a tradition honored for centuries by its Orthodox monks. Every day during the harvest, the monks make their way through the hallowed halls of the monastery to bless the wine cellar, the grapes, and toast the bounty their vineyards bring. I'm Bill Whitaker. We'll be right back with Georgia's Ancient Vines. Hi there, I'm Ryan Reynolds, and I have a list of things I like to have on set. It's just little things like two freshly cracked eggs, scrambled with crispy hash brown, sausage crumble,

and creamy chipotle sauce from Tim Hortons. From my rider to Tim's menu, try my new scrambled eggs loaded breakfast box. If you want to start a spirited debate at your next holiday meal, ask your guests which country invented wine. France, Italy, or Greece might come to mind. But most scholars say Georgia, the small former Soviet republic, is the birthplace of wine. Scientists say wine residue found on pieces of pottery in Georgia dates back 8,000 years. The country of nearly 4 million shares a border with Russia and has survived thousands of years of invasions and wars. Multiple dynasties have come and gone, but somehow many Georgian grapes survived. Tonight, we'll take you on a journey through Georgia to meet the promoters

and protectors of Georgia's ancient vines. When you first set foot in Georgia's capital, Tbilisi, she's hard to miss. Perched high up over the city, the towering mother of Georgia wields a sword in her right hand to fend off her enemies and a bowl of wine in her left to welcome friends. That welcome and the country's deep history of winemaking winds through Georgia. The vines of city dwellers cling to tiny balconies. Small family vineyards stretch along the countryside. And larger producers export millions of bottles globally. But to fully understand the rich history of wine in Georgia, we went to the fertile river valley of Kekedi to see the Alaverde Monastery.

At the foot of the Caucasus Mountains, the monastery looks like a fortress. We were invited inside its walls. Our host was Georgian Orthodox Bishop David. He oversees three monks who live on the grounds of the medieval compound. It is a quiet life, committed to God, and the godly pursuit of creating a perfect glass of wine. How many bottles of wine do you make here a year? 20,000 bottles with a maximum of 50,000 bottles.

Our wine cellar's capacity is 30 tons of wine. Four monks, 20,000 bottles. This is a lot of work. Do they ever sleep? We sleep and work at the same time. Locals help work the land. But for centuries, the monks have been the guardians of these ancient vines. The monastery dates back to the 6th century. Bishop David told us vines were planted on day one.

Does making wine make you feel closer to God? Of course. Whenever we are in the vineyard or the wine cellar, we always feel that God is close to us. Grapes have long held a sacred place in Georgia. In ancient times, wine was considered a divine drink and offered to the gods to win favor. Georgian soldiers tied a piece of grapevine inside the chest of their uniforms to protect them and to assure that if they died in battle, a vine would sprout from their heart. Man was mortal, but Georgian vines eternal. For centuries, the Georgian monks have made wine the same way,

producing reds, whites, and even ambers. More on that in a moment. The process is uniquely Georgian. Under the monastery, buried six feet deep in the ground, giant clay pots called quevery are used to ferment, store, and age the wine. It is the traditional way to make wine in Georgia. Many homes have queveries in their cellar. But today, there are only a handful of quevery makers who carry on the tradition of hand-building these clay beasts. Some hold nearly 900 gallons of wine. Pressed grapes, skins, stalks, and the juice are all mixed into the quevery,

which is buried in the ground to maintain a constant temperature. Every day during the harvest, the monks make their way through the hallowed halls of the monastery to bless the wine cellar, the grapes, and toast the bounty their vineyards bring. Most of the monks' wine is sold. Some is shared during Sunday communion inside the Aliverdi Cathedral. On this day, a haunting chant stirred inside the cathedral dome. The chant, called You Are the Vineyard, was written 900 years ago by a former king turned

monk to honor Georgia's deep connection to its religion and wine. Lit by candles, it's hard to see the scars of the cathedral. It survived earthquakes and invasions. In an attempt to erase Georgian culture, Russians whitewashed the cathedral interiors in the 20th century, covering up 11th century frescoes and used the monastery's quaveries to store their gasoline. But miraculously, many of the vines were unharmed. Bishop David says today, 100 grape varieties, some dating back 900 years, are still grown on the monastery's grounds.

And how does the wine taste? Not to talk about taste. It's better to taste it ourselves. Sitting near the ancient quaveries, the bishop opened a bottle. When tasting the quaverie wine for the first time, a person might think they are trying something very different. Ooh, it does look golden. Amber. Look at that color. And they say in Georgia that the eye drinks and the eye eats. That's what we have to be

thankful to God. Mmm. There's much to be thankful to God about in this glass. Of course, it could not be any other way. Heavenly, with notes of citrus, spices, and honey. It is complex, like the history of Georgia, but in a glass.

Georgia's future is also tied to its wines, inspiring chefs like Takuna Gachichi Lodze. How much is wine a part of the story of this country? This is, you know, the question, wine or food, or food or wine, you know? It's so together because we don't imagine our everyday life without the wine. And the wine, it's one of the most important parts in our history and our culture and in food also.

Forty-nine-year-old Takuna wasn't supposed to be a chef. While pursuing a psychology degree in New York, she was working at a restaurant and fell in love with both the chef and cooking. She dropped the psych degree and the chef and enrolled in culinary school in Manhattan. A master chef, Takuna is now known as the godmother of Georgia's culinary evolution. She runs the popular Cafe La Terra in the capital of Tbilisi, a restaurant known for its adventuresome menu and wine pairings. You're credited with revolutionizing Georgian cuisine.

How have Georgians responded to that? I just started to experiment, and then I started to do new recipes based on the traditional ones and then give this choice, you know, to people. And in the beginning it was big resistance. The people think you have to keep tradition and untouched. But for me, tradition is always innovation because every dish was somehow innovative when it started. Georgia sits at the crossroads of Europe and Asia. A Georgian dinner can look and taste like a trip around the world.

All these influences, starting from China, even from America to Europe, you know, it's gathered here. It was a hub. And that's why our cuisine, traditional cuisine, it was always fusion. Georgia was fusion before fusion was fusion. Exactly. And also because so many invasions, and we were always under the rule of different countries. And this brought these different tastes and spices and also cooking methods.

This is all yours. Oh, gosh. Perfect. Culinary clashes are my favorite kind of conflicts to cover. I reported for duty at the dinner table. That's amazing. Yes, it's beautiful. This is our first dish, like appetizer. It's called palis, the vegetables with walnuts. We cook in Georgia lots with the walnuts.

Walnuts are one of the workhorses of Georgian cuisine, pulverized and used the same way the French use butter, to make everything creamier. Not surprisingly, grape leaves are also a favorite ingredient. This is tolma, and you can't imagine any table without this dish. Our dinner included five courses with six dishes, each with a different glass of wine. We have this like a filet mignon. Do you have a couch that I can recline on?

Yes. Chef Takuna insisted we taste everything because the wines came from different regions and each had its own unique flavor. We have so many great winemakers, you know, and it is like a new revolution, you know, and not losing the old traditions, they improve it and then continue doing the great wines. But there is no wine more distinctly Georgian than this.

You see the difference of the colors? Look at the colors. Yeah. That's why it's called amber. Not orange. Yeah, no. Not orange. Never orange? No.

No. Americans know what to do with red wine. We know what to do with white wine. But if you put an amber wine out, I would not know what I should be serving that with. Actually, this is what's very interesting. Amber wine, it's like a universal wine. You can drink with the vegetables. You can drink with the vegetables you can drink

you with meat but this is what this makes it unique you know you can pair almost with everything at the first of all so I noticed you said you don't like to eat when you're cooking but you will have a sip, right? But I drink. Fine, then you can stay. Two hours later, the warmth of Georgian hospitality, where perhaps all that wine washed over us. It's like a Georgian saying that the guests are from the gods, so you have to treat the guests like you treat the gods. We usually hear about guests from hell, but guests from the gods sounds a lot better. In Georgia, we got guests are really from the gods. Cheers.

When we come back, you'll meet a guest who came to Georgia for the culture, food, and wine 25 years ago never left. Today, he's credited with helping to put Georgian wines on the map and menus around the world. When most of us order wine, we look for a favorite variety, consider the region, the age, or perhaps the cost. But ordering a glass of wine from Georgia can be a bit more complicated. The former Soviet-block nation is the size of West Virginia, but offers more than 40 varieties of wine, each with a tongue-twisting name from vines centuries old. Still, Georgian wine is gaining popularity beyond the country's borders. Last year, nearly a million and a half bottles of it were shipped to the United States, an increase of nearly 30 percent from the previous year.

We headed to Georgia's wine country to get a taste for ourselves. Stretched along eastern Georgia, more than 4,000 square miles of vineyards sit at the base of its mountains like a welcome mat. This is the Kiketi region. Three-quarters of the grapes used to make wine in Georgia are grown here. In the middle of one of Kiketti's hundreds of vineyards, we met an unlikely ambassador of Georgian wine, an American, 47-year-old John Werdeman. How does an American end up with all of this? Well, it started with a curiosity for a country

that the more I learned about it, the more fascinating it was, and nobody seemed to know anything about it, at least in my world. Werdeman grew up a world away in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He was studying art in Russia when he visited neighboring Georgia. He liked it so much, he moved here, and in 2006 bought a 62-acre rundown vineyard, hired locals, and started Pheasants Tears Winery. Georgia is the birthplace of wine.

The mild climate and rich soil have made it an ideal place to grow hundreds of varieties of grapes for thousands of years. At one time, the country reportedly had more than 1,400 indigenous grape varieties. Most were wiped out during the Soviet era, when quantity replaced diversity. John Werdeman is part of a national effort to recultivate Georgia's ancient vines and bring them back to life. So in Soviet times, out of 525 varieties, you had roughly four or five that were the main ones that were commercially available. So what happened to the rest? Luckily, Georgians were still growing them in their backyard.

They were allowed to have small private plots for their own personal use, and they kept the ancestral varieties going. So when we wanted to start to bring back these ancient varieties together with our friends, that was where we were going. We were going to the individual backyards of farmers that kept growing the varieties that their grandfathers and great-grandfathers had kept alive. Clawing back all of the grape varieties is something Georgians take seriously, a kind of declaration of independence from their former Soviet rulers.

In 2014, the Georgian government opened two research centers to locate, study, and grow those rare grape vines. Scientists head into the vineyards once a week to gather critical data. DNA of grape leaves is analyzed. Juice is extracted in the field and then tested in labs for disease. Healthy vines are replanted. Today, there are more than 500 native grape varieties growing in Georgia. At Pheasant's Tears, ancient Georgian methods are used to make the wine. Stems, skins, and juice are all mixed together, then poured in giant quaveries, buried deep underground,

and sealed with clay, where the mixture ferments and ages. This is our lower quevery level. Is all the wine here made in queveries? Most all of it. There's a couple of wines we'll be tasting later that are on the fresher, lighter side from western Georgia that we use stainless steel, but everything of structure. So based on where they are are they have a different taste? Yeah if they're in a space that breathes versus a reductive space. The wine typically remains inside the quaveries for nine months. This is where we age the wines. Then it's bottled and stored in a cellar. So where are these bottles from? These are from the last 15 years.

It allows us to understand how the wines develop and what is the most ideal time for releasing. Nothing is rushed in Georgia, something we witnessed during lunchtime at the vineyard. For the harvest of 2023, may it be healthy and long-living. Workers were celebrating the harvest of 2023, may it be healthy and long-living. Workers were celebrating the harvest with a traditional Georgian feast called a supra, a lavish meal typically held after weddings, funerals, baptisms, and births. During our lunch, guests broke into song.

This is a traditional Georgian folk song, centuries old. A few guests started Lunch hour stretched into dinner. And then came the toasts. For children, and for the children that are continuing the tradition. A half dozen of them before dessert. With so many toasts, so many songs and dancing, it's amazing anybody eats. Yeah, but the supras last for quite a long time. If workers go out to work for a few hours in the field

and they come back together, they'll have a supra, and they'll have toasts about the things that mean the most to them in life. For Georgian winemaking, for the grapes, the history, the vessel, the varieties, and the songs that were built around the feast. Some people have called the Georgian Supra an academy, where basically people come together in order to share what they know and to learn from one another.

Xone equals koueles. But John Werdeman says schooling the rest of the world on Georgian wines hasn't been so easy. First, there are at least 40 varieties of Georgian wines being served around the world, and even the most sophisticated sommelier might struggle to just pronounce them. Soporavi, Casatelli, and Mitzvahni don't exactly roll off the tongue. Then there's the issue of that unusual color, the giant ginger elephant in the glass. I've noticed a couple people we've spoken to here, when you say orange wine, they shudder a little bit and say, it's amber. Is there any difference?

No, in terms of modern wine syntax, there's synonyms. But I was also a little bit part of the early conversations where when we were talking about orange wine from Georgia, people worried, is this some sort of citrus concoction being sold outside of Atlanta? What is it that creates that beautiful color? So you're basically leaving the must or the juice of the grapes with skins, the pips, and sometimes the stems,

basically extracting both pigment as well as phenolic structure from the skins. So that's changing the flavor as well as the color. But it's also, a lot of our preconceptions can affect how we perceive the wine because if you were to show them that same wine in a black glass, they might say, what a delightfully refreshing light red. But when they see it from a white grape, they think,

is this somehow a bit clumsy or rustic or why? You know, this doesn't taste like my Sauvignon Blanc that I'm used to drinking. A little frustrating. A friend of mine who's a master of wine in London has a beautiful saying that she gave at a conference once. She said, the orange or amber wines of Georgia are not the mean sisters of whites, but the introspective cousins of reds. But over the last decade, the Georgian family of wines, reds, whites, and even ambers, have been embraced around the globe. Last year, Georgia exported over 140 million bottles of wine to more than 65 countries. What do you attribute to that kind of growth? I think in the very beginning we were walking around with maps and photographs and saying that no we're not you know swarthy versions of Russians but Georgians have their own language,

their own wine culture, their own culinary culture, history that is very ancient and you know try the wines but it took a fair amount of effort to get people to give us the benefit of the doubt and even to try. Over the past decade, more than 2,000 new vineyards have taken root in the country. And last year, Georgian winemakers made more than a hundred million dollars. All of a sudden, it's like watching a black and white picture of a rainbow come to color again. This diversity and expanse of color is coming back to the Georgian table after sleeping for almost a few centuries.

For Georgians, it's another reason to celebrate. For the rest of the world, it's a chance to taste history. dream. I'm Bill Whitaker. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes.