Milestii Mici Winery

At the entrance to the village of Milestii Mici sits the Milestii Mici Winery.  Before we left the village which was our home during PST, a group of us decided to tour not only the most famous attraction in the area, but also the largest employer in the village.

Milestii Mici Winery was founded in1969 to produce, preserve and mature high quality wines. The cellars are underground limestone galleries at a depth of 40 to 85 meters (131 to 279 feet) below the surface.  The tunnels extend for 200 kilometers (120 miles), of which only 55 kilometers (34 miles) are currently in use.  The limestone maintains a constant humidity (85 to 95% and temperature from 12 to 14 degrees C (54 to 57 degrees F) throughout the year.  These are apparently ideal conditions for storing especially some red wines which improve over time.  Some of the wines are cellared for decades before being sold.

A vehicle is required for the tour in order to travel through the underground tunnels.  The winery does not provide vehicles or have any arrangements made to hire them., and your vehicle has to have room for the tour guide to travel with you.  Since our group was too large for a taxi, we hired a rutiera for the tour.  It was a novel experience to say the least!! 

The tour takes you through several tunnel streets with names such as "Cabernet", "Shardonait", "Feteasca", "Sauvignon" etc.   There are stops to view the winery’s own source of water, an underground waterfall, tasting rooms, and cavern upon cavern of stored wines.  On a hot summer day, the cool and dark cellars were a refreshing break from the intense sunshine.  The tour provided a brief and limited view of the huge wine collection which is the pride of the winery. 

The wines stored are made from crops of various years, beginning with 1969. Grapes include Pinot, Traminer, Muscat, Riesling, Feteasca, Dnestrovscoie, Milestscoie, Codru, Negru de Purcari, Trandafirul Moldovei, Auriu, and Cahor-Ciumai, Marsala”,”Utreneaia Rosa”,”Nejnosti” etc. All are produced in strict conformity with old Moldavian traditions. Obviously some of the grape varieties are new and not native to us Americans so it would have been informative and interesting to also see the wine making process which unfortunately is not part of the tour.  

In August 2005, Mileștii Mici Winery was recognized by Guinness World Records as the largest wine collection by number of bottles in the world. Overall, the complex holds nearly 2 million bottles of wine. More than 70% of the stored wines are red, 20% are white and about 10% are dessert wines.  Although the dessert wine is least produced, it is actually the most expensive one. The oldest dessert wine bottles are from 1973 and are apparently priced at about $2000 USD.

Our tour ended with a tasting of three wines accompanied by snacks in one of the tasting rooms.   We tasted a red, white and desert wine.  Because we had opted for the lowest priced tour, we obviously did not taste expensive or collection wines. The red and white wines were nice table wines, but the desert wine was too sweet for my taste  We drank and ate to Moldovan folk songs played on violin and accordion by musicians dressed in traditional Moldovan costumes.  The accordionist was none other than the member of the Milestii Mici folkloric group who had entertained us at our Saturday evening event. We relaxed and enjoyed the wine, food and music!!!

Before leaving the winery we made a brief stop at the wine shop on the property.  A rather large variety of wines of different kinds and vintages is available for purchase. Unfortunately the wine shop does not ship to the US so my host family was the only beneficiary of my visit.  It was also interesting that unlike an American winery, there were limited items to buy.  The winery could definitely use some American marketing advice and expertise!!  They have an excellent facility and products, but do not really encourage visitors to buy and spend money.  This is a missed opportunity considering the struggling Moldovan economy. 

Milestii Mici wine cellar produces one million bottles per year. They export wine all around the world including Sweden, Japan, the USA, Great Britain, the Czech Republic, Poland, Greece, Germany, Denmark, Finland and China.  Before I left the USA for Moldova, I tried to find and buy a Moldovan wine, but had no success.

On the tour we learned that the winery will rent you a place in the cellars to store their wines, where conditions are best to keep wine. A renting niche costs $200 USD per year.  We saw a couple of vaults rented by persons from Russia and China.

Inasmuch as Moldova is the least visited country in Europe, the winery and its treasures are not really well known.  Yet Moldova is a “country with open doors in the paradise of wine” and all are welcome.  Wine production is a basic occupation of Moldavians. Every household in the villages makes their own wine and based upon my experiences thus far, it is mighty fine wine.

Noroc!!