Cricova excursion. Cricova wine cellars

Undoubtedly, one of the most popular and most interesting excursions in Moldova is a trip to the wine cellars. There are many of them, and you probably won’t be able to visit them all, but the most famous ones, such as Cricova, Small Milesti, Purcari, Braneshti, Cojusna, Romanesti, must be visited! Each of the cellars is unique and deserves a separate story. I will talk about one of them today.

I remember the distant Soviet times, when in Chisinau, the capital of sunny Moldova, many different all-Union and international conferences were held, including those on physics. I had to participate in many of them, and organize some of them. By tradition, the last question of any conference was a visit to one of the wine cellars that Moldova was so famous for! There was also a tasting room in Chisinau, where girls in national costumes first told the story of making this or that wine, then described the bouquet of which it consists, in what cases and for what diseases it is recommended to drink red or white wine, and in conclusion they brought a dozen glasses (for each) various wines, and the same number of small glasses of brandy. For an hour or more, the tasting was held to the accompaniment of violin music, Moldovan dances and light snacks. It was great, but visiting the cellars was still more interesting, and they were more popular. Now ordering an excursion to any basement in Moldova is not a problem, if there was money, but getting into the Cricova cellars under the Soviet regime was not easy. Even a letter from the President of the Academy of Sciences did not help, permission was required from the Central Committee of the Party. Alas ... then it was an unattainable dream. Much later, already during perestroika, while working at the Kishinev Polytechnic University, the gates of the Cricova cellars suddenly opened wide. The casket was opened simply: my students in the specialty "winemaking" had an internship there, and every time they invited me to visit the already world-famous Cricova cellars with them.

With students in practice in Cricova cellars

Now I will try to explain why cellars have become so famous. Firstly, Moldovan wine cellars, such as Cricova or Lesser Milesti, are the largest in the world, and they are listed in the Guinness Book. Secondly, these are entire underground wine cities with their own infrastructure, roads (more than 120 km of underground streets!), road signs, traffic lights, wine rivers flowing through wine pipelines, along the banks of which there are huge barrels instead of houses.

Scheme of an underground wine city with many kilometers of streets and avenues

After driving a few kilometers along the central Champagne Avenue, you can then turn onto Cabernet Street, cross Chardonnay Boulevard, Feteaschi Street (12 main underground streets named after wine varieties), and stop at the Wine and Cognac Museum.

Wine Museum in Cricova cellars.

The Cricova collection has more than a million bottles of old collection wines. Of course, these are mostly Cricova wines, but there are also wines from many countries of the world, including the famous Goering collection.

According to one of the legends, they began to collect wine here on the basis of the collection of the Minister of Aviation of Nazi Germany Hermann Goering. It is said that he had the most beautiful paintings of nude women, the best watches and the best collection of wine. At the end of World War II, the Soviet army was advancing and Goering was forced to leave his wine collection in Cricova. But this is only one of the legends, and it is not entirely true. Indeed, there is a Goering collection in Cricova, but it did not come from Goering. The Cricova wine cellars were built in 1952, after the Second World War, and wines from the Goering collection were brought here from Moscow as reparations for the war. Some of the wines ended up in Georgia, some in Ukraine, and most of them ended up in Moldova, since the storage conditions here turned out to be ideal.

The collection of wines is constantly updated. There are unique wines here, some of them over a hundred years old. For example, Moselle wines, Burgundy, Sicilian, Portuguese ports...

And this is part of the French wines

I had to visit this museum several times, and I listened to more than one tour, so I myself can earn extra money as a guide and answer many questions. Often asked about the cost of a bottle. I remember some examples. For example, a bottle of "Muscat", made from late-ripening grapes, when the wine is still pure, and the alcohol and sugar are natural, then the starting price of such a bottle is about 25 thousand dollars. Last year at Sotheby's, at the most expensive auction, a bottle of dry wine "Chateau Mouton Rothschild" was sold for 60 thousand dollars. Cricova has 5 bottles of the same wine from the 1936 vintage.

In general, the cost of collection wines depends on many parameters, and is not always determined only by their age, but is also determined by the number of such bottles in the world. The most expensive bottle of Cricova cellars is Jewish Passover wine from Jerusalem in 1902. This unique bottle is just one bottle made in 1902. They offered 150 thousand dollars for it, but even for that price they refused to sell it, and now it is a worthy decoration of the collection and the most expensive exhibit of the museum.

If you continue driving further along the Cricova wine cellars, then at a depth of about 80 meters underground there is a Champagne wine factory operating according to French technology. In our country, semi-sweet champagne is traditionally preferred. This is also produced here, but Cricova is proud of its brut. It is aged in bottles for 3 years, and all this time they work on champagne. If in France this is done by men, then in Moldova it is entrusted to women. They regularly rotate each bottle by 45 degrees so that the sediment is distributed more evenly. One worker turns up to 40,000 bottles a day. When the champagne is finally ripe, the neck is frozen and the temporary cork is removed, the sediment is removed, the permanent cork is put in and the label is glued. As Andrey Holostenko, the keeper of the Cricova wine, said: "Champagne should not clap loudly when opened, the sound should be like the sigh of a satisfied woman!" Well said!

When my friends from France come to visit me, I always try to organize a tour of this plant for them. After small French cellars, to see many kilometers of adits with music stands of bottles - this is a state close to shock! They had never seen such a thing in France, and did not even imagine that it was possible. The quality of the wine is excellent, and many even liked it more than their native champagne. After the tasting, the French bought dozens of bottles and took them to their homes in Paris or the Champagne province to treat their relatives and friends with Moldovan champagne!

Kilometer-long galleries with music stands of bottles

During such trips, I often had to drive myself, so I could not accompany my friends in tasting. But often I stopped the car at the filters, where they could scoop the wine with a mug from the red, pink or white river, and compare the taste. But in order to appreciate the quality of wine, you must definitely visit one of the tasting rooms. There are a lot of such halls on different wine streets, and it is desirable to know them. Among them there are such "thematic" decors as: "Seabed", "Casa Mare", "Hunting (or Fireplace) Hall", "Conference Hall" and others. It is the venue for a variety of events: national and international tastings, official and less official meetings, high-level meetings, etc.

Part of the interior of the Cricova cellars for high-ranking persons

Not everyone is allowed into all the halls, but the books of Honored Visitors keep many interesting names and stories. N.S. liked to visit Cricova. Khrushchev and L.I. Brezhnev. Not a single president who visited the Moldavian lands (including such personalities as Mao Tse Tung, Kim Il Sung, Jacques Chirac) did not pass a visit to the wine cellars. Almost all high-ranking persons tasted wine from the Cricova collection. Everything…, except for the main alcoholic of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, whose wife was categorically against the excursion.

Several times these cellars were visited by V.V. Putin. By the way, he celebrated his fiftieth birthday in the Cricova cellars! Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin presented his Russian colleague with a crystal crocodile, explaining that "the crocodile is the only animal that does not back down." Not so long ago, on his way from Germany, Putin and his family visited Chisinau one more time. The president's wife (although by now the former one) Lyudmila Putina enjoyed tasting Moldovan cognacs, and the president's daughters drank wine. Archival books even indicate that the elder saw "Noire Dionysus" - Burgundy wine, and Putin's youngest daughter preferred Cahors.

Many of the prominent world figures of our time, including Vladimir Putin, buy racks of wine for themselves, regarding it as a good investment - after all, the price of a good vintage wine is growing from year to year and is more stable than any world currency.

V.V. Putin's rack in the Cricova cellars.

These racks are still waiting for their customers

There is also a special tasting room in Cricova - Gagarinsky!

The hall was so named in honor of the famous guest - cosmonaut N1 Yuri Gagarin, who even managed to get lost in the Cricova labyrinths while visiting the cellars. Yuri Gagarin was noted not only for a short visit, but lingered in the labyrinths of the wine cellar for the whole day. In the book of honorable visitors of underground wine cellars, his words are quoted: "Entered on the eighth, left on the ninth." And he also said: "It is more difficult to part with the Cricova cellars than with the Earth." He must have been right!

In recent years, at the beginning of October, National Wine Day has been held in Moldova, and on this occasion, foreign citizens who wish to take part in this holiday will even be able to receive free entry visas for 30 days - such a decision was made several years ago!

Tasting Invitation!

Prices for Moldovan wines per glass and per liter. To get the price in dollars, divide by 13, and if you want in Russian rubles, then multiply by 2.5.

I would like to wish all readers on occasion to visit here at least once and see everything with their own eyes. Cricova cellars is a place that will certainly leave a unique mark on the memory of every visitor!

01.05.2014

At different times, the author was lucky to visit not only these, but also other equally famous basements of Moldova. About the wine festival in Chisinau, about tasting, how to choose and how to book an excursion to one or another cellar, and essays about all wine cellars with a lot of photos and interesting information can be found in the book below:

WINE ROADS OF MOLDOVA

This book may well serve as a guide to the wine cellars of Moldova! Not everyone knows that in Moldova there are huge underground wine cities with a length of roads over 200 km, the names of wine streets flashing in the white light of car headlights, as well as boulevards located almost under a 100-meter layer of rock, underground waterfalls and the world's largest collection of wines , one of which was included in the Guinness Book of Records.

By visiting, you will get acquainted with his other works!

Where is Cricova Cricova ? Small pretty cozy famous city Cricova or as it is also called Cricova"is part of a rather prestigious district-sector - the city.
Cricova Cricova Moldova . According to statistics for 2010, the population of the ancient city Cricova was about 8,400 people.
According to the 2014 census, the population of the well-known Moldovan tourist cities of Cricova increased in just 4 years by more than 2 thousand people. and reached up to 10 669 people.
Earliest mention of today's city Cricova under the names of Vadul Petrei and Veden, dates back to 1431.
Cricovo Chisinau. Thus, a relatively small excursion city ​​of Cricova only 5 years older than the capital Chisinau, of which it is a suburb.
Since ancient times, high-quality natural building stone has been mined here and is being mined to this day - a cauldron, which miners cut out of limestone.

Moldova. One of the entrances to the cellars of Cricova Chisinau

Cricova cellar. In the adits that have been formed over many centuries, there are now world-famous cellars of Cricova, the tunnels of which stretched for approximately 70 kilometers.
It is worth noting that in the cellars of Cricova there are 5 comfortable, equipped tasting rooms.
AT cellars of Cricova more than one million bottles of high-quality wine are stored, including over 100 collections of wines made from the best varieties of grapes grown in the central part of the country.
In addition, samples of unique winemaking, French wines and many other wine-producing countries of the world are also stored here.
Cellars of Cricova. According to some historians, in the spacious famous cellars of Cricova wine is still stored from the personal collection of the influential Nazi military leader Hermann Goering, who came here after the end of the Great Patriotic War.
The earliest example of wine stored in huge unique cellars of Cricova dates back to 1902.
Thanks to the presence in cellars of Cricova natural limestone year-round maintains a constant air temperature in the range from +12 to +14 degrees and maintains a high humidity of 97-98%, which is ideal conditions for long-term aging of vintage wines of the highest quality category. These elite vintage wines of Cricova completely retain all their original taste, they are very unusually elegant and quite self-sufficient.
City of Cricova gained wide popularity, mainly due to its eponymous winery Cricova, specializing in the production of sparkling and vintage " wines Cricova» method of classical champagne.
It is worth noting that in addition to the production of sparkling wines, the plant- Cricova winery also produces a huge range of high-quality ordinary and vintage grape wines, which are aged in the largest world-famous cellars of Cricova, the total length of which is approximately 60 km.

Literature: Encyclopedia. Chisinau, 1984.

Cricova photo

Cricova. Cricova. Earliest example of 1902 wine

Moldova. Cellars of Cricova

Moldova. Cricova cellar

Wine room in the cellars of Cricova

Moldova has always been very closely associated with wine, so being in this country, it is impossible not to visit the wine underground city, which is talked about so much - a real pearl of Moldovan winemaking. Still "In vino veritas".

How to get to Cricova: Bus no. 2 and 47 (two blocks down from Stefan cel Mare Blvd. on Vasile Alexandri Street); the duration of the journey is 40 minutes, in Cricova they will already tell you where to go next; fare - 4.50 lei, taxi: travel time - 15-25 minutes (depending on traffic on the roads), fare 60-100 lei

There are different types of excursions in Cricova: simple, with tastings, with gifts, etc. You can learn more about it on the website http://cricovavin.md/ru. You can find out the time of a particular excursion and book it through the website or in Chisinau at the company store at st. A. Shchuseva 96, 1st floor, and at the same time you can buy branded drinks there, which I did. I chose the simplest without tasting for 155 Moldovan lei, it starts at 9 am.

At the appointed time, such an electric car came for us, and we drove into the dungeon. In the cellars, natural limestone helps to maintain a constant temperature - 12-14 degrees and a humidity of 97-98% - the optimal conditions for aging fine wines of the highest quality category, but driving at such a temperature in an open electric car is a bit cold, especially when cornering when it is very windy. Therefore, going to the cellars of Cricova, take something warm.

The cellars of Cricova are former building stone mines that have emerged as a result of the historical mining activities of these places. Many buildings of Cricova, Chisinau, Balti and other cities of the Republic of Moldova were built from limestone, which was mined here. Some branches of the excavation are still working, so this huge underground city continues to grow. The plant was founded by the famous Soviet winemaker Pyotr Unguryanu in 1952. With the declared 120 kilometers of underground corridors and tunnels, only three have been prepared for the tourist route, the rest are workshops, production facilities, etc.

Cricova is a real underground city with its avenues and streets that bear the name of the brands of wines that are stored in the niche of this street: Cabernet, Riesling, Feteasca, Aligote, Sauvignon, Dionysus.

Barrels lie along the whitewashed walls along the wine streets - large...

And huge

On each barrel there is a metal plate with the emblem of the plant and a piece of paper with all the data of the maturing wine.

We were shown the shop for the production of sparkling champagne and the whole process. The wine is poured into glass bottles, yeast and sugar are added. Bottles are placed on special shelves at a slight slope. Yeast forms sediment in the bottle. From time to time, the bottles are rotated around their axis at a certain angle so that the sediment slowly descends to the neck. They say that this business is trusted only to women and only by hand. It's like a special profession - flipping bottles. The process of turning bottles is called remuage. By the end of this period, the yeast sediment descends to the cork itself. The bottles are placed in a special machine in which the neck is frozen, the cork is removed and the frozen sediment is removed. The bottle contains clear sparkling wine. The bottle is corked and a wire mesh is put on.

Special attention should be paid to the exhibition of winemaking development. The museum contains numerous exhibits that tell about the history of viticulture and winemaking.

The cellars of the Cricova wine cellar are carved in the shape of a huge glass. In the thickness of the porous stone, kazy are hollowed out - alcoves for bottles. The vinoteca in Cricova is huge - 1.2 million bottles of 658 titles. It is believed that this is the largest collection in Europe.

Among its first exhibits are wines from the collection of Hermann Göring. Nazi No. 2 understood painting, loved beautiful women and knew a lot about good wines. His marvelous collection is a World War II war trophy.

I also found here a collection of Russian President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.

There are also unique exhibits in the wine cellar. For example, a crystal bottle of red "Easter Jerusalem"

and liquor "Ian Becher" 1902 - the only ones in the world.

Photos of famous people - politicians, businessmen, actors who rent cells here to store their collections.

In such a storage, of course, there cannot be a tasting room. The tasting rooms of Cricova are combined into a single complex and are unique in that they are located underground. The tasting complex includes several large halls, different in style and designed for a different number of guests. Here are a few of them:

In 1966, Yuri Gagarin got lost for a day in the hospitable galleries of Cricova. Having got out of the dungeon, the first cosmonaut of the world admitted: it was easier for him to break away from the Earth than to leave the Crickov cellars.

Visiting the underground cellars of Cricova, you will definitely not regret the time spent!

Underground galleries of Cricova (Chisinau, Moldova) - expositions, opening hours, address, phone numbers, official site.

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Limestone caves of the 15th century in the town of Cricova near Chisinau are considered an obligatory point of the program for wine lovers and connoisseurs. Previously, a stone-shell rock - a cauldron was mined here. Actually, the cellars of Cricova are worked-out adits. They form a real underground city, stretching for 120 km and consisting of galleries-streets that bear the names of famous wine brands - Cabernet, Aligote, Pinot Noir, Merlot, Champagne, etc. Here, nature itself has created ideal conditions for storing a drink - temperature not higher than +14 °C, air humidity - about 98%. Wine collections have been collected in these places since 1947, and the Cricova sparkling wine factory (Cricova) was established in 1952.

Cricova winery is listed in the Guinness Book of Records for the most outstanding wine collection - more than 20 thousand bottles.

What to watch

Cricova winery, which now owns underground galleries, specializes in sparkling wines. But real masterpieces of winemaking of various varieties are stored here, there are wines aged from the beginning of the 20th century. The collection of one of the ideologists of the Third Reich, Hermann Goering, formed the basis of the wine cellar. You can watch a film about the history of the plant in a small underground cinema - it is the warmest here (about +17 °C). There is a museum in one of the halls - photos of famous visitors hang on the walls (among them are Gagarin, Jacques Chirac, Angela Merkel and other prominent figures, politicians, movie and sports stars, scientists and diplomats). It also houses collections of wines from famous politicians and businessmen, including Vladimir Putin and US Secretary of State John Kerry.

The cellars of Cricova amaze the imagination with their scale, there is even a hall resembling a wine glass in shape.

The oldest exhibits of the cellars of Cricova are Jerusalem wine harvested in 1904 and the Czech liquor "Jan Baker" 1902. Another rarity is Chateau Mouton from the Rothschild collection of 1936.

During the tour in the cellars of Cricova, you can get a wide variety of information about wines: the process of their production, aging, storage. The excursion electric train sequentially passes through all storage streets and production workshops. For tastings, there are 4 restaurant halls (national, presidential, fireplace and sea), in addition, conferences and banquets are held here. There is also a company store where you can buy wines from the Cricova winery.

Practical information

Address: Cricova (15 km from Chisinau), st. Petru Ungureanu, 1. Website.

Opening hours: Monday to Friday 9:00-21:00.

Cost of economy package - 185 MDL, underground city (without tasting) - 350 MDL, VIP - 1999 MDL. You can pay both in cash and by card. Tours are by appointment only. Prices on the page are for October 2018.

Products of the factory of sparkling and vintage wines "Cricova". A bottle of sparkling (champagne) Gold Crystal costs 130 thousand rubles in Russia, or only 2.2 thousand US dollars.

The Moldavian town of Cricova (11 thousand inhabitants) is located 15 km from Chisinau. Here is the famous Factory of sparkling and vintage wines "Cricova", established in 1952 in the place of the former kotelts mine.

The oldest mention of the settlement dates back to 1431. For several centuries, building stone (cauldron) used in the construction of Chisinau and other cities has been mined in local quarries. In 1952, the Cricova Winery was founded in the adits. In addition, the Crickov adits were intended as a bomb shelter in the event of a nuclear attack; up to one hundred thousand people could hide here. The underground galleries were used to store strategic food supplies.

In Cricova adits with a length of up to 120 km, natural limestone helps maintain a constant temperature - 12-14 degrees and humidity 97-98%. These are the optimal conditions for aging vintage wines of the highest quality.

The plant of sparkling and vintage wines "Cricova" is the pearl of Moldovan winemaking, the only enterprise in the country and one of the few in the post-Soviet space that produces sparkling wines using the classic champagne method. In addition to sparkling wines, the company produces a wide range of quality ordinary and vintage grape wines. Every second bottle of wine and every third bottle of champagne consumed in the Soviet Union was produced in Moldova or from Moldovan raw materials.

The National Wine Collection with tasting rooms is located here, more than a hundred collections of wines from the best grape varieties grown in the central part of Moldova are stored. The vinoteca has more than a million bottles, including, in addition to Moldovan, unique French, Italian, Spanish and other foreign wines.

Cricova winemakers have won more than 60 gold and silver medals at various prestigious international exhibitions and competitions. The mill is a member of the European Trade Leaders Club, which has awarded the company the Gold Star of Quality. In 2002, the plant was awarded the highest award of the Republic of Moldova - the Order of the Republic, for a significant contribution to the development of the national economy.
Visitors are offered excursions of different price categories and duration. The package “Kingdom of Wine” lasts 2 hours and costs 650 lei per person, includes a tour and tasting of 6 types of wine with snacks. The "VIP" package, lasting three hours and priced at 1300 lei per person, includes an excursion and watching a corporate film Cricova in the country's first underground cinema, tasting 9 types of wine with snacks.


Plan of the underground kingdom of wine

In the underground city, the streets and boulevards bear poetic wine names - Cabernet, Pinot, Feteasca, Aligote and others.

Electric cars and cars for VIPs run along underground roads.

underground wine production

The guide explains the intricacies of wine technology

These bottles regularly turn women's hands.

Automatic machines are installed for these purposes, but female labor is preferred

Here, wine bottles are checked for transparency.

The first underground cinema in Moldova operates in the catacombs

Museum of the History of Moldovan Wine. The vine is one of the most ancient plants on Earth, its age is more than 10 million years. On the territory of Bessarabia, the first archaeological artifact confirming the age of the vine was discovered in the 50s of the twentieth century. The trace of a vine leaf on the stone dates back to the third century BC. e.

Ancient Greece in the Roman era had a great influence on the development of Bessarabian winemaking. The exhibits on display testify to this: amphoras, mugs, plates, jugs, crushers, etc.

Also on display is a fragment of the cellar, surrounded by old objects, original barrels, crushers, wine presses, etc. In the wine cellar you can see a wine grower and a "white stork". Legend has it that the "white stork" saved many people by quenching their thirst with grape juice, which he brought to the besieged fortress, where the defenders were exhausted by thirst and hunger. The white stork is also an element of the emblem of the Cricova plant.

The development of winemaking in Bessarabia is also evidenced by the letters of Moldavian rulers of 1495, 1763 and 1775. On the map of Moldova from 1807 you can find the first centers of winemaking. The development of winemaking during these periods is evidenced by various tools for planting, caring for the vine, for making barrels, certificates and other exhibits.

At the heart of the creation of the Cricova Winery are the ancient traditions of winemaking, production, and storage of wine.

Soviet products of the Cricova plant

The wines produced at the Cricova Winery were highly appreciated at the international competition "Golden Griffin - 2010"http://allmoldova.com/uimg/Cricova/cricova180810_2.jpg , held in Yalta under the patronage of the International Organization of Vine and Wine (OVV, Paris). Cricova entered the competition with Roze Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay Prestige, Zeus dessert wine and classic Cricova Grand Vintage champagne. All the wines presented at the competition won gold medals, and Cricova Grand Vintage champagne was the best in the nomination "Best sparkling of the year", which received the highest rating in the competition.

Pictured is champagne. Cricova Grand Vintage 2007 vintage (Cricova, collectible). This wine masterpiece is made from the Pinot Noir variety, according to the Champenoise method in the famous Cricova cellars, by secondary fermentation in the bottle, followed by aging for at least five years. Cricova oenologists for the first time in the history of Moldovan winemaking have created this magnificent classic champagne, it is distinguished by a delicate floral bouquet and a fresh, subtle taste, which gives a unique style and high class. At the international competition Efervescente du Monde 2013 (France) Cricova Grand Vintage 2007 won a silver medal, a gold medal as always with the French.

Combine "Cricova" owns vineyards with an area of ​​more than 1000 hectares.

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