In deepest Moldova, an underground city of 60 square kilometres houses one of the largest wine collections in the world -part of it stolen by Nazi Hermann Goring. Ann McElhinney takes a tour

Sparkling and Fine Wines Enterprise "Cricova".. the wine cellar of the former Soviet Union

By Ann McElhinnery
Irish Times
January 15, 2003

Not many people have heard of the Republic of Moldova. Caught between Romania and the Ukraine, it is Europe's forgotten country. The Economist calls it Nowhereland. In 1992 a bloody civil war hardly got a mention in the international press, though hundreds died.

Since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, almost one million people have emigrated. Most of the remaining 4.5 million citizens try to live on around dollars 30 a month. Now the poorest country in Europe, Moldova hasn't much to recommend it. In Chisinau, the capital, only one Boulevard has street lighting. But Moldova has something to be proud of.

Some 20 kilometres outside Chisinau in a disused limestone mine lies the country's greatest treasure - Cricova - the wine cellar of the former Soviet empire. It is a 60 square kilometres underground city with 39 kilometres of wine caves, street after street, row upon row, stacked high and stretching far away into the distance.

It's so vast that we had to drive around it in a car. The streets have names such as Strada Sauvignon, Aligote, Feteasca and Codru. Along these boulevards 30 million litres of wine is housed. It is a truly amazing sight.

Cricova produces classic sparkling wines; fine wines and ordinary table wines. Most are exported to Russia. The classic sparkling wines are made using the Methode Champenoise - the same method that is used in France's Champagne region. This Moldovan 'champagne' sells for around E3 and could easily be mistaken for the real thing.

Entering the wine cellar is like checking into an underground car park. However, the comparison is short lived. The air becomes rarified not polluted and there is stillness.

'The limestone of the disused mine creates an ideal environment for the storage of the wine. The temperature here is between 12C and 14C degrees all year and there is a constant 90 per cent humidity,' says Alexandru Sitaru, Cricova's marketing manager.

We park the car after driving for a few minutes underground. Sitaru can barely disguise his pride as he reaches the historical wines.

'It was started with Hermann Goring's wine collection, which was seized by the Red Army,' he says. Goring, Hitler's deputy and the founder of the Gestapo, was a compulsive collector of all things fine. Cricova has been the beneficiary of his expensive tastes.

We pass bottles covered in dust and cobwebs, the spoils of war. In his travels across Europe, Goring gathered priceless wines along the way. hanks to his acquisitive nature, Cricova now has wines of the musketeers and from Bordeaux, Burgundy, Portugal and Italy.

Perhaps saddest of all is the oldest bottle. It is a Jewish desert wine produced in Jerusalem in 1902. It is not hard to imagine a Jewish family treasuring this bottle for a special occasion that never came. In Cricova no one knows - or seems interested in finding out how - Goring managed to gather this extraordinarily rich collection.

Seven thousand miles away, the first president of the US holocaust museum, Dr Michael Berenbaum, hazards a guess.

'Obviously, Goring had an insatiable appetite to possess everything he could - art, books, money, power, palaces and even wine,' he says.

'In 2000 in Sotheby's, a bottle of 1945 Mouton Rothschild was sold for dollars 60,000. Here in Cricova we have five bottles of Mouton Rothschild from 1936,' says Andrei Holostenco, who is keeper of Cricova's collection.

The 30 million litres stored in Cricova are a reminder of better days in Moldova. Its very fertile land made it the fruit-basket of the former Soviet Union and no soviet state occasion was complete without a Moldovan fine wine.

Guiding us around the vast cellar Holostenco, who looks like a happy Breznev, opens the tour by sharing one of the many axioms which guide his life. 'It's better to love an older wine and a younger woman and not vice versa,' he says.

He attributes his cheery nature to the miraculous qualities of the Cricova wine. 'If a poet or artist drinks these wines he is twice the artist after. I don't know about the other professions but after three glasses of the wine anyone will start to write poetry,' he says.

Every visitor to Moldova eventually ends up in Cricova. 'It is easier for me to say who wasn't here,' says Holostenco.

'From presidents to astronauts, almost all of them were here. We have had Yuri Gagarin, the first astronaut and Valentina Tereshkova the first woman in space. Vladimir Putin had his birthday here last month. If you have been to Moldova and have not been to Cricova you are not considered a high guest,' he added.

The new British ambassador had just left. 'He took notes and he is trying to see if Cricova will be entered in the Guinness Book of Records as the largest underground city of wine. We are waiting,' says Holostenco.

Of all the visitors, Yuri Gagarin remains Cricova's favourite. In 1966 he came for an afternoon and emerged two days later. A handwritten note he left behind is shown to all the visitors.

However, obviously under the influence of too many glasses of wine, Gargaran must have become confused about his travels, forgetting he was merely the first man in space and had never been part of a lunar voyage.

'I am very grateful to the people who have made this wine and I encourage them to continue. If they run out of soil to grow the grapes I will bring them soil from the moon,' his rather wobbly note reads.

Moldova has a long history of wine-making. Along with rape and pillage, Roman soldiers brought the gentle tradition of wine making. Today almost every Moldovan continues the practice and it has an almost spiritual significance for the impoverished people.

'Like all children in Moldova, I drank some wine every day with lunch,' says Oleg Mutu, a Moldovan film-maker. 'Everybody in the village makes wine. If you don't make wine in this country you're a nobody.'