Cricova

A city beneath the city

Fifteen minutes' drive north of Chișinău, a gate opens into a hillside. Behind it lies not an ordinary cellar, but a city. More than a hundred and twenty kilometres of tunnels, laid out like streets, wide enough for cars and a little electric train. All year round, the temperature stays between twelve and fourteen degrees. The air is damp and still. This is Cricova, one of the best known wine houses in Moldova, and almost everything that makes it special lies underground.

Stone for the capital

The tunnels are older than the winery. For centuries, limestone was quarried here, the pale stone that built much of Chișinău. What remained were empty quarries up to eighty metres deep. According to the Unesco application, the underground area covers almost eighty-five hectares. In nineteen fifty-two, someone saw something else in them: a natural cellar. A sparkling wine factory was set up there. The constant cool did the rest.

Bubbles the traditional way

Cricova makes sparkling wine by the traditional method. The second fermentation happens in the bottle itself, and the wine matures for months on its lees. The principle is the same as in Champagne, but here the cellars are naturally cool. The house calls itself the first producer in the country to work this way. According to the dossier Moldova submitted to Unesco, about two million bottles of sparkling wine leave these cellars every year.

A bottle from nineteen oh two

Deep in the tunnels lies the national wine collection. It was started in nineteen fifty-four and today holds almost one point three million bottles. Its showpiece is a red dessert wine from nineteen oh two, the last bottle of a batch of four hundred. A Czech herbal liqueur from the same year is kept here too. Another part of the collection has a darker past. These are wines attributed to Hermann Göring, which came to Cricova via Moscow after the Second World War.

Tasting underground

Visitors ride a little electric train through the underground streets. They watch a short film in a cinema below ground and finish in one of the tasting rooms. Tours must be booked in advance and are offered in several languages. According to the Unesco dossier, almost one hundred thousand visitors came in twenty nineteen. At the entrance, a restaurant serves Moldovan dishes with the house wines. If you come without a car, take a taxi. The ride from the centre takes about twenty minutes.

Heritage in the making

In two thousand and three, Cricova was declared national cultural heritage. In twenty twenty-five, Moldova placed its cellars, together with those of Mileștii Mici, on the Unesco tentative list for World Heritage. And so an old quarry, once dug out to build a capital, found a new role. Above ground, the city grows. Below it, in the same silence as seventy years ago, the wine matures.