Cricova the city of underground wine in Moldavia
Calling it a wine cellar would be reductive, because with its 200 km of galleries reaching a depth of 90 meters, where they rest something like 10 million bottles, Cricova is a town of underground wine. In addition to one of the most amazing places visited during our trip Moldova.
To turn it we climbed on an electric train and, caught in providential windbreakers, we passed in seconds from 30 degrees outside to 12 degrees of the tunnels dug over decades to extract the limestone to build Chisinau, the capital of the Moldova, which is about 15 kilometers. Only in the Fifties it was thought to use this hidden maze for the aging of the wines and so was born Cricova, the largest wine cellar in the world.
An underground world, rich, where in addition to thousands of barrels you can also find the unthinkable, like a cinema, a museum of Moldovan wine, banquet rooms, until you arrive at Sancta Sanctorum: the galleries where the collections of the finest wines from the world, some belonging to the greats of the earth, such as the Chancellor Merkel and Vladimir Putin, are preserved so much to understand.
It seems that the Russian president has a true predilection for Cricova, so much so that he celebrated his 50th birthday here with a party where, we can imagine, the wines Cricova flowed literally to rivers.
We were satisfied with a substantial tasting of the best labels of the house, – including the sparkling wine produced according to the method champenoise, the flagship of the company, – accompanied by a sumptuous dinner based on typical dishes, including zama soup and mamaliga, a sort of polenta tanning. All served in the picturesque setting of the Casa Mare tasting room, furnished as the typical guest room of traditional Moldovan houses, located 13 meters deep. "And so we went out to see the stars again."
