Tour and Wine Tasting at Milistii Mici Winery Caves and Tunnels, Ialovini, Moldova.
Our friend Anna, a local who works as a program coordinator for the Peace Corps, set-up the reservation, negotiated a good price, and had her brother drive us over in the family van. After we left the city it took about 30 min for us to get to the winery… As usual, we passed mile after mile of vinyards, but now covered in fresh snow. While sitting in the back of the van, bouncing around like beer cans on all the bumps and pot-holes, and after almost catching some air going down and up a hill in the snow at 120, Mark did ask Anna’s if it was her bother’s first day driving. We made it alive and no one got sick.

Entering the vineyard we got directed to the office, at this time is had started to snow again ever so lightly. Anna hopped out to find our tour-guide, and once she got back she said that we we’re going to drive the van into the caves? The tour guide hopped in and they opened a gate to the underground caves and there it was an full underground “city”. It as absolutely amazing. The winery has about 200 employees that work underground in these caves all day, everyday. These tunnels were started about 200yrs ago to mine limestone. In1968, when Russia brought in machinery that was able to dig through the lime stone and extract building blocks, they spent the next 40 yr making 200 kilometers of underground tunnels –all big enough to drive through. The winery currently only uses about 50 km of the tunnels. The temperature underground stays constant between 12 -14 C and also has a constant humidity level of 85-95%, and it's dark, making it the ideal environment for storing wine. The deepest point in the tunnel is 80 meters underground, with the restaurant where we ate and tasted wine at 60 meters underground.
So, as we drove through the tunnel, we first stopped at a underground spring, that created a waterfall in the tunnel. Per our guide the water as fit to drink, which I did try and it was nice and fresh. We moved on to see miles of roads with big wine barrels on the side in which wine is stored. (and these are only the barrels, they also store over 2 million bottles of wine! The largest collection in the world.) The oak barrels were built from oak that was obtained in Russia. The barrels (6000 liters) are still in use, and after each wine has finished it’s time is the barrels (about 20 years in the barrel), woman climb into the barrels through a tiny door in front, and scrape the insides of the barrels clean and raw before new wine is placed in the same barrel. Supposedly they clean the insides of the barrels always by hand.
We found it very interesting that Milistii Mici did not grow their own wine grapes until 2000. Before that they made the wine from unprocessed after-the-crush wine juice from vineyards around the country. The grape juice was blended by their wine makers then placed in barrels and turned into wine.

While driving along the barrels I asked our guide if they all had wine in them. She said only those with a passport did. She explained that a passport was simply a white piece of paper placed on the outside of the barrel, describing the wine and date the wine was placed in the barrel. We continued on and our second stop was at the underground wine cellar. This is the largest underground wine cellar in the world. It is the most impressive cellar I have ever seen, and so much wine. Walking around this cellar was a beautiful experience. You could see bottles that were covered in dust and growth around the corks of all sorts, and others that had more recently been placed there. The wine that was stored here was wine that had spend maybe 13-20 years in wine barrels and was placed in these wine bottles in 2000, for their second aging. Many of their wine’s for sale are from 1986 and 1987 at the latest. That means that the 1988's have not yet been released! Incredible!

We continued on, and our guide told us that during 1985-1987 Mikhail Gorbachev, then leader of the Soveit Union, banned or greatly limited all forms of alcohol, and people had to hide alcohos products or they would be taken away to be controlled or destroyed. At Milestii Mici, they hid the best wines in a secret tunnel within the cellar, because corrupt officials would take that first. With that she pressed on something and a whole stone wall moved back, about three feet thick of solid stone. While it was automated now, people used to have to push the whole wall back by hand. And behind the wall there was another smaller cellar tunnel with more wine (small being relative to the rest of the place). In this tunnel the oldest wine is stored. There were bottles from 1968. Our guide told us that Steven Segal, who was visiting Moldova last week to invest in a movie production faciliy, also took a tour of the wine cellar and purchased 4 bottles of wine that were from 1968 for $10,000. As I stood in front of the bottles of wine from 1968, all covered in dust, and nasty assorted detritus, I was wondering how those wines would taste, and whether they were really worth spending $10,000 on. As our guide told us about which specific wines he had bought, I could see how proud she felt being able to tell that story. She told us that becuase the storate conditions are so idea, the wine would last and last as long as the corks were changed every 25 years.

We wandered through the cellars that seemed never ending. And our guide kept pointing things out and telling us little tid-bits of information like when she pointed out their Negru de Purcari wine , she said that they ship this wine to England since it’s one of Queen Elizabeth’s favorites. At this point I was thinking that I should have brought a corkscrew, they would never notice one bottle missing?

Then she said that we were going to our final stop to taste wine…YES!!!!
So, we walked back to the car and drove to our final stop. As, we got there we entered this beautiful hallway, and you could hear live music from a violin and accordion. We entered this nice room, that was beautifully set with wine glasses, bread,cheese, meats, fruit, and vegetables. We were going to taste seven wines. So, as we got poured a little bit of wine for tasting, our guide explained that we should be smelling hints or currants for their Sauvignon, a bouquet of flowers for the Pinto Gris. More food arrived. Then we moved on to the reds, we had a Purpliu, a Codru- which is a mixture of Cabernet and Merlot grapes, then we had their 1986 Carbnet Savignion, which was fantastic. We ended the tasting with a sweet wine – 1987 Traminer, really creamy. As she finished explaining about the last wine, she said well enjoy your food, and just let the waiter know which wine you would like to drink. Basically, all seven bottles we had purchased ( as part of our $50 fee) and we were able to drink them all. So, there we were, sitting 60 meters underground, with beautiful food, and great company making our way through six bottles of wine. For two hours we talked, ate, drank and when the musicians came to our room, we also danced, Blidi even played the accordian! To conclude our tasting the last bottle was opened. This was a bubbly, which I liked very much. As, we wrapped things up, our guide came back and brought us the two bottles per person that we got to take home. As we had planned to go wine tasting I had though that $50 was not inexpensive to go taste wine, but my vision of what it would be like was purely based on my wine tasting experience in the US. The whole experience was nothing like anything I had imagined, or possibly would have been able to imagine.

So, we made our way back to the car, taking photos along the way and laughing. Anna’s brother drove us out of the caves back to a white snowy outside. While we had been down in the tunnels it has started to snow hard, and everything was covered in snow. Our final stop was the wine store, where Mark and I bought 6 bottles of wine. I made sure I picked up on of those Negru de Purcari bottles. Whether the Queen really drank the wine or not, I was sold on it and wanted to try it.
As, we can out of the store in was snowing hard and it was beautiful outside, laughing, we took one final picture and do I have to say more………………..