Visits & Interviews

1) A TRIP TO CHATEAU VARTELY WINERY




During the Easter Holidays I've made a trip to Chateau Vartely Winery.


"Chateau Vartely" –is a young but ambitious in the good meaning of the word wine making company, placed directly in the orhean region, where up to now live and become a reality the rich national traditions of cultivation and producing of the  "beverage of the Gods" - wine.

(All the pictures and videos used for making the video below were taken by me.)

The company Chateau Vartely owns as well a modern Tourist Complex with the same name "CHATEAU VARTELY Wine. Culture and Leisure Resort", situated only 45 km from Chisinau, near Orhei town. European standards, professional service, special programs – these are proposed by"Chateau Vartely" Resort, which represents 4 hotel-type houses, 2 restaurant rooms, 3 tasting rooms, a huge inner yard and a recreation area, specially designed for you to feel free and relaxed within nature. 

In the main tasting room you can choose between two tasting packages, High Quality or Selected Wines, in order to learn about the wines produced by Chateau Vartely. The second tasting room, called “World Collection”, represents the biggest wine collection from 5 continents in the Republic of Moldova.

The restaurant of the complex, specialised in French cuisine, skilfully combined with the national one, will surprise you with the pleasant ambiance and warm atmosphere, that reigns in its rooms. The chef will propose you the most selected culinary recipes, which will manage to satisfy the finest tastes. The restaurant has a capacity of over 260 places. Our restaurant is suitable both for warm family reunions, and for romantic dinners, for those who seek intimacy, and as well business meetings, banqeuts and other events.    

The classic European grape varieties used in the wine making determine the range:Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris, Chardonnay, Traminer, Feteasca.

In the last years the Chateau Vartely wines, have obtained a considerable amount of esteeemers all over the world. This fact is proved by the big amount of exported product to such countries such as: U.S.A., France, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Norway, Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic, China, Romania, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.


At Chateau Vartely work professionals, who believe that the quality of the wine – is the quality of taste.
The goal of the company Chateau Vartely is to produce only high quality wines, prepared with the use of modern technology, based on ancient recipes from grapes grown on the blessed land of Moldova.
In Chateau Varity’s wine collection you’ll always find the wine which will suit perfectly your taste, temper, mood and event of your life.

These and many other things I have been told by our tourist gide. But this is not yet of my experience:
There I met the Director Natalia Bulgaru 

She told me about the Ice Wine Traminer(Natural, sweet, high quality white wine. A unique qualitative wine from Qualitätswein mit Prädikat group (German quality wine classification), which is also called "ice". For its fabrication, noble, sweet, classical Traminer is frozen at the temperature -6 - 10 ºC, and then it is processed at the "Chateau Vartely" using a special technology and seasoned considering the conservation of the rate of natural sugar and alchool. The taste and the flavor of this wine may be with boldness called aristocratic. Being perfectly  equilibrated, ice wine amazes with flavor saturation of exotic fruits and rich taste, but thus it remains fresh, gentle, with a long-lasting aftertaste. The amount of let out production is limited.).Moldova(Chateau Vartely) is one of the three countries in Europe producing the Ice Wine.




Also she showed me all the merit awards of the company and told about the future plans of the company.

     

       































2) AN EXCURSION AT CRICOVA S.A.

(All the pictures and videos used for making the post below were taken by me.)

My second trip was at the awesom wine cellars of Cricova winery.

The map of the underground wine city Cricova

The wine cellars of Cricova is second largest wine cellar in Moldova, after Milestii Mici(largest in the world). It boasts a mere 120 kilometres (75 mi) of labyrinthine roadways, versus MM's 200 kilometres (120 mi), tunnels have existed under Cricova since the 15th century, when limestone was dug out to help build Chisinau . They were converted into an underground wine emporium in the 1950s.

 Half of the roadways are used for wine storage. The roads are named by the wines they store. This "wine city" has its warehouses, tasting rooms and other facilities underground. It goes down to 100 metres (330 ft) below ground and holds 1.25 million bottles of rare wine. The oldest wine dates back to 1902. The temperature is maintained at about 12*C (54 *F) all year round (which is perfect for wine).

There are different types of degustation rooms, eachone made in a different style:

Legend has it that in 1966 astronaut Yuri Gagarin entered the cellars, re-emerging (with assistance) two days later.

Yuri Gagarin's portret with his inscription below

Cricova is one of the very few wineries in the world that produce sparkling wines in accordance with the classical French method, purportedly invented centuries ago by the monk Dom Pierre Perignon – "Methode Champenoise" by means of the secondary in-bottle fermentation and an ultimate maturationcuvée in horizontal position of at least 3 years.

Cricova makes a unique sparkling red wine, kodrinskoie-sparkling, made from cabernet sauvignon stocks and marketed as having a 'rich velvet texture and a blackcurrant and cherry taste'.

The "Grand Cellars of Cricova" house a remarkable collection of wines – The National Oenotec. The unique exhibits ("Jerusalem of Easter" vintage 1902, the liqueur "Jan Becker" vintage 1902) together with other 158 brands from Bourgogne, Moseley, Tokay, Rein, etc. – make up the precious thesaurus of the establishment as well as of Moldova in general, comprising nowadays a total of about 1.3 million bottles.

The Engineer Technologist, NINA SOCHIRCA, and The Collection Head of the Republican Cellar "Cricova", ANDREI HOLOSTENCO were our "guides" in an astonishing excursion throug the Cricova's private collection of wines.

Andrei Holostenco

However, the pride of the Oenotec are, first of all, the wines bearing the name "Cricova", which brought the winery a collection of national and international tasting awards. As of 2008, the collection consists of over 70 silver, gold and Grand Prix awards.