Mileștii Mici

Mileștii Mici is not far from Chișinău, but the change begins before you reach
the winery.

The city gradually disappears behind you, the buildings become fewer, the road becomes quieter and vineyards, fields, gardens and villages begin taking their place.

This is worth noticing.

Mileștii Mici is famous for what is beneath the ground, but the journey there also gives you a small look at the countryside surrounding the capital.

Rows of vines follow the hills, houses sit between fields and gardens, and the landscape opens up.

You are going to see a lot of wine undergroundand above ground, you first see where part of the story begins.

The entrance is surprisingly easy to recognise.

A large Mileștii Mici sign stands beside the road, together with a wine barrel that removes any remaining doubt about where you have arrived. ;-)

From here, the surroundings become greener and Trees line the road and Moldovan flags welcome visitors as you approach the winery.

There are stone buildings, gardens, barrels used as decoration, flowers and small details connected with wine everywhere you look.

It is worth arriving with enough time to actually look around rather than treating everything above ground simply as the entrance to the cellars.

Because there is quite a lot to see before you disappear underneath it.

Not everything underground is bottles.

Along parts of the route you pass barrels resting in large chambers carved into the limestone.

Here the atmosphere changes again.

After driving through long tunnels, stopping and walking gives you time to notice the walls, the shape of the galleries and just how much rock is above and around you.

The light is artificial, the temperature stays cool and there are no windows reminding you what the weather is doing outside.

For a while, the outside world simply isn't part of the visit.

And then come the bottles... Thousands of them! Then more and more...

They fill large sections built into the walls, stacked horizontally in rows and marked with numbers and small information plates.

Some bottles have been lying here for decades.

The collection at Mileștii Mici contains more than two million bottles, including old and rare wines.

This is one of those places where photographs struggle slightly.

A photograph can show hundreds of bottles and standing there, you realise that what you are looking at is only one small part of what is
stored around you.

The Golden Collection is one of the best-known parts of Mileștii Mici.

Here older wines are kept in individual sections of the underground
galleries, with vintages and information recorded beside them.

Some bottles are covered with dust. that is not neglect, they are just supposed to stay where they are.

Walking between them feels very different from walking through a wine shop or looking at a modern display.

These bottles have been lying underground while years - and in some cases decades - passed above them.

There is something rather satisfying about that and nobody is in a hurry
down here.

Especially the wine.

One of the first things you may notice are the small green vehicles used to carry visitors through the galleries.

And their presence gives you the first clue about the size of the place.

This is not a cellar where you walk down a staircase, look at a few barrels and come back fifteen minutes later.

You are about to travel through it...

The entrance itself looks almost modest compared with what waits behind it, then the vehicle moves forward, the daylight begins disappearing behind you and Mileștii Mici changes completely.

The difference is immediate.

The air becomes cooler, the light changes, outside sounds disappear and within a short time, the gardens, trees and daylight are gone and you are travelling through tunnels cut into limestone.

They are wide enough for vehicles and continue far beyond the part visitors
normally see.

There are intersections and turns, and the galleries have something that makes the description underground city suddenly make sense:

They have streets and some are even named after grape varieties.

The complete underground network extends for more than 200 kilometres.

You will not travel through all of it, that would make for a rather long
wine tour. ;-)

But you don't really need to and after travelling underground for a while, the numbers become less important because the distance itself starts explaining the size.

One tunnel leads into another..

Then another and you turn, continue, stop, move again and gradually lose any useful idea of where you are in relation to the world above you.

These galleries were not originally created for tourists or even for wine.

They are the result of limestone extraction. where the stone were removed from beneath the area and left behind an enormous network of galleries, and in 1969 Mileștii Mici was established here for storing and maturing wine.

It turned out that the old galleries offered something extremely useful.

Underground, the temperature remains around 12–14°C throughout
the year, creating stable conditions for storing wine.

What had once been a place for extracting stone became a place for keeping something entirely different.

Mileștii Mici is obviously associated with wine, but the underground visit itself can also be interesting for children.

For them, the attraction is something completely different.

You travel underground in a little vehicle, where there are tunnels, there are intersections and there are enormous underground rooms.

Every time you turn a corner, there seems to be another tunnel waiting.

Forget the wine for a moment and it isn't difficult to understand the appeal and why it feels more like a little exploring an underground world that somebody forgot to make small.

Eventually, the route begins taking you back toward daylight and after spending time underground, you notice the change.

First the light.. Then the warmer air, then trees, sky and open space return almost emmdiatly.

It is strange how quickly something completely ordinary - daylight - can suddenly feel very bright.

You emerge in essentially the same place you entered, but now you know what is underneath it.

And that changes how the place looks.

Before you are leaving Mileștii Mici, you should spend a little time outside again.

Walk around.

Look at the stone buildings, gardens, barrels, flowers and vineyards and look back toward the entrance that swallowed you underground not
long before.

The underground galleries are obviously the reason most people come here, but the vineyards and countryside outside are part of-
Mileștii Mici too.

And there is a nice contrast between them.

Above ground there is sky, vegetation, roads, vineyards and ordinary village life.

Below it are kilometres of limestone galleries and millions of bottles quietly waiting in the dark.

You would never guess how much is underneath your feet simply by-
driving past.