Moldova
Cricova
Ride an electric train down wine streets that hide Göring's captured cellar 80 metres underground.
The street signs read Cabernet, Feteasca, Aligote, and the pavement is limestone eighty metres down. An electric train hums past bottle racks through air that never leaves 12 to 14 degrees. Some tasting halls are carved like theatres; one is styled as the floor of a vanished sea.
Cricova began in 1952, when Moldova's winemakers moved into limestone mines whose stone had built much of Chișinău. The galleries now run to 120 kilometres of named streets, and the house sparkling wine is still made down here by the classic bottle-fermented method, turned by hand on riddling racks in the cellar dark. The National Collection holds almost 1.3 million bottles, among them a 1902 Jerusalim de Paști that is the last survivor of its 400-bottle run and about two thousand wines seized from Hermann Göring's personal cellar as the Second World War closed. Tours travel the named streets underground and finish in the tasting halls.
Solo
Ride the wine train with a booked tour and linger at the riddling racks and collection vaults; the place carries a visit without company.
Couple
The decorated tasting halls, one in stained glass, one a seabed fantasy, turn a pour into an occasion, and Chișinău is close enough to make an evening of it.
Friends
Long cellar tables and multi-course tastings are built for a group; add the food and let the afternoon disappear underground.
Family
Older children get an underground town with street signs and a train ride through it; the wine matters less than the place itself.
- The galleries run to 120 kilometres of streets named Cabernet, Feteasca and Aligote, up to 80 metres below ground.
- The National Collection keeps almost 1.3 million bottles, including about two thousand wines seized from Hermann Göring's cellar in 1945.
- Sparkling wine has been made here by the classic bottle-fermented method since the 1950s, riddled by hand in the galleries.
- The cellar holds 12 to 14 degrees in near-saturated humidity year-round, so the visit works identically in January and July.
Cellar feasts run Moldovan: învârtită rolled around cheese, potato and cabbage, pork stew over polenta, and Baba Neagră, the slow-baked black cake, for last.
The house sparkling is the thing to order, bottle-fermented in these galleries since the 1950s and poured at cellar temperature.
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