Moldova’s going underground

Last year, my French friend Claude told me there were wine caves you could drive through in Moldova that had extraordinary wine collections. I like wine. I like travel. I decided to see for myself. Why not? Change is good.

Few people, myself included, know much about Moldova, and fewer still have visited here. This former Soviet republic is sandwiched between Romania and Ukraine. Its two state-run wineries, Cricova and Milestii Mici, have almost 100 miles of underground winemaking and storage facilities in old limestone mines.

A few months later, I was riding in a Toyota 4Runner through those caves, one of the more surreal experiences in my life.

Moldova also has private wineries, many of which are working hard to produce vintages that appeal to Western consumers. They prefer lighter, fruitier wines over the sweet varieties favored by Russians, who are Moldova’s biggest but sometimes most troublesome customers.

During a 10-day trip in the spring, I visited seven private wineries, plus the two state-run operations.

I flew into the capital city, Chisinau (Kee-shih-now), from Paris. If you are thinking of going to Romania to see Dracula’s Castle or to Ukraine for those onion-domed churches, consider Moldova too. U.S. citizens don’t need a visa.

Explore Chisinau, then head out to the countryside, which is filled with grapevines and green fields, lovely but very poor.

Chisinau, in the center of the country, is slowly recovering from six decades of Soviet rule. This was the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic until independence in 1991. Construction cranes dot the skyline. Billboards advertising Mercedes-Benz cars and Orange cellphones appear on streets filled with aging buses belching exhaust and sidewalks often in poor repair.

Some might find Chisinau depressing, with gray, crumbling buildings. I found it a fascinating study, modernity trying to take hold in a country still dealing with its past. I loved walking around downtown, checking out shop windows, trying to read the labels in grocery stores. (Moldovans speak Romanian -- or Russian -- or both.)

In the countryside, I saw ruddy-faced families and farmworkers driving small horse-drawn carts. Women tilled the rich Moldovan soil with hoes.

A village pension in Trebujeni served a lunch of yellow peppers stuffed with brinza, a white cheese; soup with vegetables and goat meat; cabbage leaves stuffed with rice and carrots; and mamaligia, much like my mother’s Dixie corn bread, only denser. We drank the homemade wine that many Moldovans make.

Exploring the caves

The caves at Cricova and Milestii Mici are so big, 34 and 62 miles long, respectively, that you drive through in a car or ride a small electric train. With winemaker Sergeiu Galusca as our guide, my driver, translator and I took the Toyota through Milestii Mici, 12 miles southwest of Chisinau. At times, we were more than 200 feet underground.

During our tour, Galusca pushed a button and a hidden limestone door rolled open. Behind it the winery hid 10,000 bottles of the winery’s best stock -- placed there during Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s anti-alcohol campaign in the mid-1980s. That effort led to the destruction of many Moldovan vineyards and threatened the winery’s historic collection.

The next day, we drove to Cricova, nine miles north of the capital. Most tourists ride a little red train through the caves, but we drove the faithful Toyota with our guide.

After passing racks of sparkling wine in production, we saw Cricova’s historic collection. Its oldest wine is a 1902 vintage, kept on its side under a bell jar so no one will disturb it. The collection also includes 1930s vintages that the Soviets confiscated from No. 2 Nazi Hermann Goering as World War II ended.

We toured five tasting rooms, each done in a different style. One is an opulent, official-looking room with a table seating 25 to a side. Here, our guide explained, many state documents are signed.

Use of Cricova for official events may explain why the roads leading to it are decent. Elsewhere, they are often wretched.

Tour operators say that fixing the roads, providing bathroom facilities along them and building more hotels and restaurants outside Chisinau are fundamental to encouraging visitors. (Unless you are especially adventurous or speak Romanian or Russian, use a tourist agency that can put together a complete package to Moldova.)

Wine is the country’s biggest export and may be its best economic and tourism hope. “For many years, we thought our wines were the best,” said Gheorghe Arpentin, president of the Union of Oenologists of Moldova and a professor at Moldova State University. “Then we got independence and we started to travel abroad. We found that our wines weren’t the best.” He’s trying to change that.

Historically, Moldova sold 80% of its output to Russians and thus tailored it to their tastes. But Russia has given this industry a one-two punch in the last two decades. First came Gorbachev’s campaign. Then in 2006, Moscow banned Moldovan wine, supposedly for being tainted -- but more likely for political reasons.

Although the embargo was lifted in 2007, it left the heavily agricultural country reeling. Wine production dropped by 63% in 2006 from the previous year, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Now, private wineries, which produce the country’s best vintages, are seeking to diversify their exports to Asia, Western Europe and the United States. Seven of them --Chateau Vartely, Acorex, Purcari, Dionysos-Mereni, Lion Gri, Bostavan and DK-Intertrade -- have united to form the Moldova Wine Guild to promote their products and their country.

Most of these companies have staff that have worked at wineries in California, France and New Zealand and are familiar with Western tastes. For example, Constantin Stratan, winemaker at Dionysos-Mereni, worked one harvest at Kendall-Jackson in California’s Russian River area. DK-Intertrade, in the far south near Vulcanesti, works with British and New Zealand consultants and produces an excellent line called Firebird Legend. A good bit of the wine I tasted could stand up with California products -- if anybody could get them to the Golden State.

In the countryside

As we drove toward Purcari, a chateau-like winery near the border with Ukraine, we traveled through hillsides lush with yellow flowers and the soft greens of spring. White blossoms dotted the apple trees. People had planted red tulips in front of even the most modest homes in the small towns. Spring is a good time to visit, as is fall, when wine and opera festivals abound.

Most of the wineries look more like factories than their dressier cousins in California. All welcome tours by appointment. Chateau Vartely, north of Chisinau, is clearly investing money in tourist accommodations -- a large restaurant and four lodges in different national styles were under construction. Moldovan Victor Bostan, who owns Purcari, reportedly spent almost $20 million remodeling it in 2004. The complex features a hotel with eight rooms, a billiard parlor, a vast dining and wine-tasting area and ponds for fishing or shoreline barbecues.

On our way back to Chisinau from Purcari, we saw several police officers at a turnoff from the main road watching for alcohol smugglers from Ukraine.

Moldova has a testy relationship with heavily Russian Transnistria, an autonomous region along the Ukrainian border that claims independence from Moldova. Border crossings there can be complicated, and the State Department has warned Americans that local authorities often prohibit the taking of photographs in sensitive areas. Transnistria is a throwback to the old Soviet Union, with a statue of Lenin in Tiraspol, its capital. The Tatrabis tour company even markets a day tour there that it calls Back in the USSR.

Moldova has had many different rulers over the centuries -- Romans, Ottomans, Tatars and Russians -- and all have left their mark on the country. We visited the stone ruins of Turkish baths along the Raut River near Orheiul Vechi. There’s a fortress in northeastern Moldova built in 1499 by the national hero, Stefan cel Mare, who defeated the Ottomans in 15th century battles. One of Chisinau’s major streets carries his name, and his statue stands at the entrance to the downtown park.

I saw families on outings and young couples stealing time alone on the park’s benches, like young couples everywhere. They were watched over by a bust of Russian writer Aleksandr Pushkin, who spent two years in exile in Chisinau for his radicalism in Russia.

Diagonally across from Stefan’s statue is the city’s main Orthodox cathedral and another park. The nearby flower mart was ablaze with the reds and yellows of tulips and other spring blooms. A bazaar near the church was selling braided loaves of bread and round cakes for Easter, which is Moldova’s biggest religious holiday.

About 2:30 a.m. on Easter, I walked from my rental apartment through deserted city streets toward the cathedral. As I crossed a boulevard, I saw holiday lights -- think Christmas in any American downtown -- blazing above the street and over the entryway to the church plaza.

Reaching the cathedral, I found hundreds of people, standing in rows outside, plus Moldovan TV with its bright lights.

It was a moving scene, especially coming after decades of Soviet repression, when religious observances went underground. The cathedral was an art museum then, one woman told me. But these people had kept their faith.

As they arrived, people went in and bought candles, lighting them with a flame flown in from Jerusalem. They had with them baskets of elaborate Easter cakes and breads, decorated eggs and bottles of wine to be blessed.

At 3:15 a.m., the priests emerged from the packed church and started moving through the throng, sprinkling congregants with holy water. Then they -- and I -- went home to sleep. Moldova, I was learning, was full of surprises.

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travel@latimes.com

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Planning this trip

GETTING THERE

From LAX, Lufthansa, United and Air France offer connecting service (change of planes) to Chisinau. Restricted round-trip fares start at $1,738.

WHERE TO STAY

Leogrand Hotel, 177 Metropolit Varlaam, Chisinau; 011-373-22-20-12-01, www.leograndhotels.com. Doubles from $283.

Hotel Codru, 127 31 August 1989, Chisinau; 011-373-22-208-104, www.codru.md. Doubles from $157.

WHERE TO EAT

Grill House, 24 Armeana, Chisinau; 011-373-22-224-509, www.grillhouse.allmoldova.

com. Grilled meat and vegetables. Meals about $45.

La Taifas, 67 Bucuresti, Chisinau; 011-373-22-227-692, www.lataifas.allmoldova.com. Traditional Moldovan food. Meals about $30.

TOURIST AGENCIES

MoldovaTUR, 4 Stefan cel Mare Ave., MD-2001 Chisinau; 011-373-22-540-301, www.moldovatur.com.

Solei Turism, 64 Decebal, MD-2015; Chisinau 011-373-22-636-596, www.solei.md/eng/

MONEY

Moldova is not a member of the European Union, but many businesses accept euros. Also, do not assume that restaurants, especially outside Chisinau, will accept credit cards or that you will find ATMs.

TO LEARN MORE

Contact the Moldova tourist board, www.turism.md/eng.