Top 4 wineries of Moldova
Moldova is a wine making country. For the majority, it’s known for its wines, for a perfect drink of all the times and history, from all the points of view. Here people believe that it’s good for health or for making friends and reconcile enemies. Most of the people here prepare its own wine every autumn for personal use and we also have a lot of wineries with secular traditions. We raise lots of kinds of grapes, from the known Cabernet, Sauvignon, Merlot to more specific and authentic ones, which can be found just here, like Moldova, Rare Black (Rara Neagră), The Girlish Royal (Feteasca Regală). I’ll go now with the best wineries to visit and to buy wine from, in my point of view.
This winery is my favorite one, because of personal reasons. My grandfather has a house near it. So I spent a lot of time in that area, in that village. It is known because of a World Guinness Record for the biggest quantity of wine stored — 1,5 million bottles of wine. It’s a wonderful place, like an enormous underground city with named streets and districts.
2. Purcari
Purcari has some of the most tasteful wines of Moldova. You won’t be disappointing when visiting it. It is also known for preparing wines from rare grapes.
3. Mimi
Mimi is an original place to go. It’s not like the classical wineries, there is a castle for visitors, where you can hold different events. It is a new brand on our market but with huge opportunities. With its originality, it made a big raise among its competitors.
4. Cricova
Cricova is known as a front door of Moldova for the diplomats. All the international delegations that come to visit Moldova, end up visiting the galleries of this winery. Our politicians use it for strategical reasons. They think it’s a nice place to bring the internationals there, get drunk with them, and after ask for collaborations and grants :D. Cricova is also known for its World Guinness Record for the longest wine galleries on earth. Just imagine how perfect it is, 120 km of happiness. Cricova is a place where personalities can have their own spots for keeping wine. Personalities like Angela Merkel, Vladimir Putin, John Kerry have their space where they keep wine.
You can visit all of these places by car, being guided underground in your personal car. You can have there a lunch accompanied by a wine tasting. All of them have their own restaurants, underground or not where you can discover the impressive national cuisine. Of course, these are just 4 of the lots of factories and wineries. Wine of Moldova is not as known as others but it is loved by many internationals and exported to many countries, not only to Europe but also to other continents to countries like China, USA, Japan.
In our culture we have a big respect for wine and wine making. We tend to know the grapes used for a wine from a young age. It is very cheap to have a select wine in Moldova. You can have a liter of home-made wine for €1 or a bottle of one from industry for €2, and even if it’s so cheap it’s very tasty, of course, there are more expensive ones which are very special. I don’t drink wine here in Netherlands, from my background we have high standards, as we don’t have bad wines, and if you want to have a wine similar with those of €2 from my country, here you have to pay €10 or more. I have to ask my parents to send me wine to enjoy it.
You can also find it here in Netherlands on this site: http://www.thewineadventure.nl/Moldavie
I hope you will have the opportunity to try a good Moldovan wine during your life!