Moldova
17m
Jun 21, 2026
The Country That Kept Its Wine Underground: Moldova's Cellar Heritage and the Politics of Survival
Moldova has the largest wine collection in the world stored underground. Its cellars run for 200 kilometers beneath the earth, are large enough to drive cars through, and contain bottles that survived Soviet collectivization, Gorbachev's anti-alcohol campaign, post-Soviet economic collapse, and a Russian trade embargo. This is not a wine country with a remarkable cellar. It is a civilization that stored its most important archive underground — and the archive is in bottle.