Cricova wine cellars: choose the underground visit, tasting or long lunch

Cricova gives the phrase “wine street” a fairly literal meaning. Beneath the Moldovan town, former limestone workings have become roads, storage galleries and visitor spaces, with names such as Cabernet and Feteasca attached to the underground streets. It is an unusual place to learn how wine is made and kept, even if you have no ambition to describe a glass as having notes of anything more complicated than grapes.

The useful booking decision is how much of your day you want to spend tasting and eating after seeing the cellars. The short visits already cover the principal underground stops. Longer packages add wine, food and time; they are not simply the admission fee you must pay to see the interesting bit.

Cricova’s winery history begins in 1952, when former stone-extraction galleries were put to use for wine storage. This is the connection worth keeping in mind as you travel through: the tunnels were not built solely as a spectacular backdrop for visitors. Their environment serves the work of storing and ageing wine. Cricova’s history explains that adaptation and its production methods.

The winery makes sparkling wine using both bottle and tank fermentation. For the traditional method, a second fermentation takes place in the bottle, followed by maturation; another production method uses stainless-steel containers. When the guide discusses sparkling wine, listen for which process is being described. “Sparkling” tells you there are bubbles, but it does not by itself tell you how they were produced.

The collection is another distinct part of the visit. Chișinău’s official tourism account dates its foundation to 1954. Think of the collection, the production areas and the tasting as three different ways of encountering wine: bottles retained and documented, wine being made or matured, and wine selected to serve to visitors. A tour through a collection does not mean its historic bottles are the ones in your wine tasting.

There is also deliberate theatre in the visitor spaces. Cricova describes stained glass showing the vine through the seasons in its European Hall, while its Casa Mare draws on the reception room of a traditional Moldovan home, using carved wood, embroidered towels and woven textiles. Those are details to notice if your route includes the rooms, rather than reasons to assume a particular hall comes with your booking. The cellar descriptions show how the complex combines working infrastructure with spaces designed for hospitality.

The standard underground itinerary lists the streets, ageing section, classic sparkling-wine production, National Collection and tasting complex, plus the cinema. Visiting the tasting complex is not the same as buying a tasting. Matinal and Orașul Subteran list the sightseeing stops without a wine tasting; the named tasting packages add one. Cricova’s tour menu makes that distinction. The prices and conditions below were checked on 21 October 2026.

MDL means Moldovan lei. The booking pages list the base prices and durations for Matinal, Orașul Subteran, Business and Expert.

Business is a sensible pick when you want some tasting but still have other plans for the day. Expert gives more time and a larger selection, but its name is not an entrance exam. You do not need to arrive with a cellar at home or an opinion about every vintage. The current Expert booking page permits a party starting at one person, so a couple does not need to assemble a group of four simply to request that package.

Național is the more substantial food choice. Its published menu includes filled pastries, pork stew with polenta, cheese and sour cream, and babă neagră for dessert. Choose it when the meal is part of the outing you want. If you want a shorter visit or do not want that set menu, choose one of the earlier packages instead. There is no need to turn a cellar visit into a three-hour lunch simply because the larger package sounds more complete.

For two adults interested mainly in the underground site, a non-holiday weekday 10 am Matinal booking costs 500 MDL together. Its 70-minute duration gives an expected finish around 11.10 am. Two Orașul Subteran base fares cost 800 MDL, so keeping that morning appointment saves 300 MDL for the pair without dropping any of the sightseeing stops listed for those two packages. Travel to and from Cricova sits outside that calculation.

For four adults who want the tasting and traditional meal, a Național weekday booking before 4 pm, on a non-holiday, totals 5,200 MDL. At an agreed noon start, the three-hour package would finish around 3 pm. That is a meal-centred afternoon rather than a quick stop squeezed between other reservations.

A non-holiday Saturday daytime Național booking adds the published 100 MDL per person weekend supplement, taking the same four-person total to 5,600 MDL. The additional cost is 400 MDL for the group. The weekday morning example avoids supplements. The Saturday daytime example has one supplement, so its total does not depend on assuming how overlapping charges are combined.

The operator also adds 100 MDL from 4 pm and applies a public-holiday supplement. Choose a non-holiday weekday start before 4 pm to use the base prices in the table; Matinal is restricted further to its 10 am appointment.

Book in advance by calling +373 79 202 999 or +373 69 077 734, giving the package, party size, date, time and language. English is among the advertised tour languages. Cricova lists the visitor complex at 124 Chișinăului Street, Cricova and publishes a strict rule that late arrival cancels the reservation. Arrange your journey to arrive before the agreed start, rather than using the tour time as your target arrival in town.

If you are using our data-only Moldova eSIM during the trip, arrange another way to make that ordinary booking call. The data plan does not supply a local calling service. Save the confirmed address and start time for your driver before leaving Chișinău.

Bring a warm layer. The excursion guidance gives underground temperatures of 10–12°C; a sunny day above ground does not make the cellars warm. The longer food packages are served at the Kingdom of Wine, or Regatul Vinului, complex, so do not picture the entire meal as dining among the storage bottles.

Take-home wine is a separate choice. The booking pages offer a 250 MDL souvenir set containing a classic sparkling wine and a dry red wine, with its own quantity field. For example, adding one set to the two-person Matinal visit takes that bill from 500 to 750 MDL. You are buying bottles to take away, not increasing the number of wines served during a tasting.

Choose Matinal or Orașul Subteran if the underground setting is what brought you here. Add a tasting or the long lunch because you want that part of the day as well. The wine streets are interesting before anyone hands you a glass.