Some of Moldova's most intriguing wineries explored!
Moldova's best wine? Cricova and Mileștii Mici might just be your answer.
Within and beneath the Moldovan countryside lies a stunning network of former limestone mines converted over decades into the largest wine cellars on the planet.
Within the tunnels roads have names, cars are the only sensible way to get around, and the temperature never changes regardless of the season above ground.
This is no tourist gimmick though. Mileștii Mici and Cricova are two enormous wine facilities on the outskirts of Chișinău, representing one of the most vast and impressive monuments to the art of wine production anywhere in the world.
A Brief History of Cricova and Mileștii Mici
What to Expect on a Visit
Practical Information
Why Visit Cricova and Mileștii Mici
Both sites began life as limestone quarries, mined for the stone used to build much of Chișinău itself.
As the stone was extracted, it left behind networks of underground tunnels which were structurally stable, naturally cool, and humid in exactly the way that’s ideal for aging wine.
From the mid-20th century Soviet Moldova’s wine industry, supplier of a huge proportion of the wine consumed across the union and in allied states, began repurposing these abandoned quarries as storage and over the following decades the tunnels expanded into the scale they operate at today.
Mileștii Mici, the larger of the two, holds the Guinness World Record for the largest wine collection in the world by number of bottles. Around two million of them, occupying a tunnel network that stretches for some 200km, of which visitors can see only a small fraction on any single tour.
Cricova, charmingly situated and with a lovely little town linked to the winery, is a little closer to Chișinău and slightly smaller in scale at around 120km of tunnels also has the more storied guest list.
Its underground cellars have reportedly hosted Yuri Gagarin, Vladimir Putin, and a roster of other high-profile Soviet and post-Soviet visitors over the decades.
Cricova also maintains a ‘Golden Collection’ that includes bottles seized from Hermann Göring’s personal cellar at the end of the Second World War.
This is not a quick tasting room stop.
At both sites, visitors travel through the tunnels by electric minibus underground ‘streets’ that are signposted with names, as the scale of the network makes navigation on foot impractical for staff and visitors alike.
Expect to pass row after row of oak barrels and rack after rack of bottles receding into the dark, kept at a optimal temperature year-round regardless of the blazing summer or freezing winter above.
Tours end in a tasting room set deep underground where you’ll work through a flight of Moldovan reds, whites, and sparkling wines, often paired with local cheese and bread.
Both sites also maintain of rare and historic vintages, viewable on the standard tour although to taste these would test the wallet of casual visitors.
Both wineries are a short drive from central Chișinău.
Cricova around 15km north, Mileștii Mici around 20km south.
Moldova doesn’t get anywhere near the international recognition its wine industry deserves, overshadowed unfairly by the likes of France.
But this is a country where a substantial share of the land dedicated to wine production, per capita, rivals far more famous wine nations, and where winemaking has been a documented tradition for millennia.
Cricova and Mileștii Mici are great introductions to that story and in terms of scale are truly impressive as examples of underground infrastructure, still in active use, that turn a wine tasting into something closer to an expedition, and not only for oenophiles.
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