Moldova's Smallest Wine Tour

Forget Moldova's famous underground wine cities. Today there are no 200-kilometre cellars, no enormous tour groups and no gift shops selling commemorative corkscrews. We're going small. Really small.

Welcome to Moldova's Smallest Wine Tour, a full day devoted to the little guys: family wineries, tiny vineyards, homemade food and the sort of bottles that rarely make it beyond Moldova, never mind onto a supermarket shelf back home.

We'll visit three small Moldovan wine producers, meet the people actually growing the grapes and making the wine and squeeze in a proper home-cooked lunch with a local family. This is less about polished tasting rooms and more about discovering the wonderfully personal side of Moldovan wine.

There may also be a babushka involved. If there is, arrive hungry. Very hungry.

9:30am – Escape From Chișinău

We'll collect our tiny band of wine adventurers in central Chișinău and head into the countryside, where the buildings get smaller, the roads get narrower and the vineyards get considerably bigger.

Eventually Google Maps will become increasingly optimistic and we'll arrive at our first family winery.

10:30am – Winery Number One: The Little One

Our first stop is a small independent Moldovan winery, where there's a reasonable chance the person pouring your wine also grew the grapes, made the wine, designed the label and fixed the tractor that morning.

We'll explore the vineyard or cellar, meet the people behind the bottles and get stuck into our first tasting. Expect indigenous Moldovan grapes, small-production wines and considerably more generous pours than anyone interpreting the word “tasting” literally might expect.

You may discover a brilliant wine you've never heard of. Don't worry, neither has Waitrose.

12:30pm – Lunch With A Moldovan Babushka

Now for arguably the most dangerous part of the day: lunch.

We'll sit down with a local family for a proper home-cooked Moldovan feast, where somebody's mum, auntie or babushka has been preparing enough food to feed approximately twice the number of people we've actually brought.

Expect plăcinte, mămăligă, sarmale, local cheeses, homemade bread, garden vegetables, pickles, meat dishes and whatever else keeps emerging from the kitchen. Just when you think the table cannot physically accommodate another plate, somebody will somehow find room for one.

Naturally, there'll be homemade wine on the table, quite possibly several different ones. There is also a reasonable possibility that a suspiciously clear liquid will eventually appear in an innocent-looking bottle and be introduced as “a little homemade something. ” Treat the word litte with considerable suspicion.

At some point you'll attempt to explain that everything was delicious but you're completely full. This will be listened to politely, completely ignored and interpreted as a request for another plăcintă.

The babushka always wins.

2:30pm – Winery Number Two: Even Smaller

After lunch we'll squeeze ourselves back into the vehicle and head deeper into wine country for our second family producer. By now we're properly away from Moldova's conventional winery circuit and into the world of small batches, family vineyards and wines with stories attached to them.

We'll taste another selection of local wines and discover how dramatically things can differ between producers only a relatively short distance apart. There might be gleaming stainless-steel tanks, old barrels or a cellar underneath someone's house. There may also be a dog asleep in the doorway who appears to have appointed himself Head of Security.

This isn't corporate wine tourism. It's the chance to meet people for whom wine isn't a visitor attraction; it's simply what their family does.

4:30pm – Winery Number Three: Just One More

We could head home at this point, but that would display an alarming amount of common sense for a Tipple Tours itinerary.

Instead, we'll visit one final tiny winery for our last tasting of the day. By now you'll have sampled wines from three completely different small producers and probably developed an unexpectedly strong opinion about a Moldovan grape variety you couldn't pronounce six hours earlier.

We'll meet our final winemaker, taste their wines and raise a glass to Moldova's extraordinary collection of independent producers. There's also an excellent chance somebody will eventually ask whether we'd like to try “just one more.”

You already know the answer.

6:30pm-ish – Back To Chișinău

Eventually we'll point ourselves back towards the capital. The morning journey usually involves introductions, sensible questions and enthusiastic discussions about Moldovan viticulture. The return journey has a surprisingly strong correlation with closed eyes and gentle snoring.

We'll drop you back in central Chișinău with a stomach full of homemade food, several new favourite wines and perhaps a few bottles bought directly from the people who made them.

Why Go Small?

Moldova has some spectacular famous wineries and we love them but this tour is about discovering the other side of Moldovan wine. It's about meeting a winemaker rather than following a tour guide, tasting bottles produced by the thousand rather than the million and visiting vineyards where the people making the wine actually know every corner of the place.

Most importantly, it's about Moldovan hospitality. A small family winery can provide an experience that no enormous visitor centre can reproduce, particularly when lunch involves homemade food, family recipes, local wine and a determined grandmother who refuses to accept that any human being could possibly have eaten enough.

No giant wineries. No giant groups. No conveyor-belt tastings. Just three tiny wineries, a handful of guests, one enormous Moldovan lunch and a frankly irresponsible number of plăcinte.

Small wineries. Small group. Big pours. Delicious lunch.