Moldova
Mileștii Mici
Drive streets named Cabernet and Feteasca through the wine cellar Guinness lists as the world's largest.
Your headlights pick out street signs: Cabernet, Feteasca, Sauvignon. The galleries run as wide as a village lane and vanish in both directions. Above ground it is harvest heat or snow; down here it is 12 to 14 degrees, always.
Mileștii Mici stores its wine in a former limestone mine south of Chișinău. The tunnel network runs to about 200 kilometres, 55 of them lined with bottles, and in 2005 Guinness World Records registered the Golden Collection as the largest wine cellar in the world, over 1.5 million bottles with new vintages added every year. The first bottle went underground in 1968, a generation before Moldova existed as an independent country. Visits roll along the underground avenues and end with a tasting in halls cut from the rock.
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Solo
The tunnels carry a solo visit easily: street after named street of bottles, then an unhurried tasting down in the rock.
Couple
Choose a tasting with a meal and stay below ground for the evening; candlelit halls under a million bottles need no staging.
Friends
The underground feasts are built for a full table: zeamă, sarmale, collection reds and the slow drive back up to daylight.
- Guinness World Records registered this as the world's largest wine cellar in 2005: over 1.5 million bottles, with new vintages added every year.
- The tunnel network runs to about 200 kilometres, 55 of them lined with wine, in galleries wide enough to drive.
- The mine keeps a constant 12 to 14 degrees, so the cellar wears the same temperature in August as in January.
- The first bottle was stored in 1968, and the underground streets are named after the grapes ageing along them.
Tasting meals underground run properly Moldovan: zeamă, mămăligă with sheep's cottage cheese, sarmale and trays of plăcintă.
Ask for the collection pours: reds laid down in the Golden Collection decades ago, drunk at the cellar's own temperature.
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