Troutworthy's Travel Blog: Going Underground In Moldova

Trebujeni is a cute little village. It and Butuceni are coated with a layer of fine, cream-coloured sand which, when disturbed, penetrates everything: after an hour or two on foot, it's inside my shoes and socks, impressively given that there are holes in neither. There's a well outside virtually every house here. Given the sand and the heat, I have been consuming vast quantities of cool water, so I can see why it would be a priority.

Well, well, well.

I've spent a day and a half doing not much of anything, venturing out occasionally to explore the village and environs, including a dramatic series of caves just up the path. In between, I return to decompress, enjoy more of Liuba's cooking, lie on the bed, and get the sand out from between my toes, not necessarily in that order. But it's time to move on.

The heat has been intense – not something I hadn't envisaged in August, of course. Even if it's cooler today, doing something distinctly chillier is appealing. So, before returning to Chişinǎu, I take a trip to the Cricova winery.

I'm not particularly a fan of wine. A glass or two with a meal is all I'll usually go for. I tend to think of wine as a particularly dead drink: deracinated grapestuff from wherever, which has been mouldering in a cellar for years, the bottle gathering dust. That said, Moldovan wine (like Georgian wine) is different, very much alive, and vocal. Not always saying the same thing of course: some wines sound like they're trying to sell you insurance, others sound like they're threatening to punch you in the nose. I don't have anyone else to make conversation with on this trip, so the wine's loquacity has been welcome at mealtimes. 

All that said, the Cricova winery is well worth a visit even if you're not interested in wine. I sign in for a tour, join the crowds milling around the tourist-friendly entryway, and eventually we're shepherded onto a sort of elongated golf caddy. This passes through an ominous tunnel mouth and into a true underworld, a seemingly endless warren of wine. We're conveyed past pitch black openings, sterilized machinery, bottles and barrels, through twists and turns. My direction bump is usually pretty good, but I've lost all sense of it within five minutes of entering this place. We're told that there are 120km of tunnels down here. That makes it the world's second-largest underground winery complex; the largest is also in Moldova, though is apparently less interesting to visit.

Tunnels.

Our transport picks up quite some speed, and it gets pretty chilly as we whip through the subterranean air. The website warns visitors to bring a warm jacket. I didn't (since I'm jacketless for the entire trip), but I did put on an extra T-shirt under my T-shirt, and this serves me well. Some of my less British tourmates are shivering even in their coats. I think of climate change and the survival potential of living in places like this.

After a while we're brought to a factory, where a production line of serious-looking women are bottling sparkling wine. (Not champagne, since we're not in Champagne, but made using the same method.) When I ask her, our guide informs me that the sparkling-wine-bottlers are invariably women because women are patient and hard-working. I laugh at the implicature about men, but I don't think this goes down well.

Bottles, all at the appropriate angle.

There's also an underground cinema, where we're treated to a surprisingly philosophical promotional video (what is wine? what is Cricova?). Fortunately, this is accompanied by a very tangible glass of sparkling wine to wash it down. The end of the tour shows us the weirdly palatial underground facilities near the entrance, where the great and the good and many who were neither have assembled to taste the result. From what I can gather, the Cricova winery is one of the jewels in Moldova's crown, and supplied the whole Soviet Union for many years. The first tasting hall is named after Yuri Gagarin, who – he quipped – spent much longer enjoying the wine here than he ever did in space. His portrait hangs by the door.

Gagarin and his letter of thanks.

The tour ends at the gift shop, and we're promised a caddy-bus to transport us back to the entrance, but none materializes. In a rare moment of human self-organization, the group starts walking back to the exit instead. I have my doubts about this – are we even going the right way? – but they are dispelled by the sunlight when we round a corner. Back under the sun, I collect my backpack and trek into the centre of Cricova to get the bus to Chişinǎu. Shockingly, the price for a bus ticket has gone up from the advertized 4.5 lei (about 20p) to a bank-breaking 6 lei (more like 26p). Inspired by my visit, I start thinking about my conversation partner for dinner this evening.