Race On Tour
A 10K through the world’s largest wine cellars is a real corker, says Jennifer Hattam
A cheeky 10K wine run in Moldova
IT’S NOT OFTEN that conditions in a race swing from sub-zero to 14C – much less back and forth three times in under an hour. What’s a runner to wear? I decided on shorts and a T-shirt, paired with arm warmers, a balaclava and gloves. And as I stamped my feet in the snow at the start line of the Milestii Mici Wine Run, I repeated this mantra to myself, ‘There’ll be hot wine at the end.’
The promise of wine, local colour and a unique experience was what had drawn me to travel on a bitingly cold, grey January weekend to Moldova, one of the least-visited countries in Europe, to run in the tunnels of an old limestone mine.
Beginning in the 1960s, those passageways had been converted into the world’s biggest wine cellars. Indeed, Moldova, (wedged between Romania and Ukraine) was the Soviet Union’s largest wine producer and exports 140 million litres of wine a year. With 125 miles of underground passages, there’s room to stage an ultra here someday – the 10K Wine Run explores a mere fraction. •
The Milestii Mici Winery lies around 10 miles south of the Moldovan capital city of Chisinău, where we boarded the race bus in front of the State Circus, a hulking Soviet modernist landmark on the dreary industrial outskirts of town. The ageing bus slid around on the icy roads, its fogged-up windows converting the landscape into vague, white-covered shapes. Outside the castle-like walls of the winery, men chopped wood and lit fires with chemical starters in a huge whoosh of flames, while young locals in traditional dress spun arm in arm to energetic Eastern European pop music to keep the runners entertained (and themselves warm).
After jogging a few lengths up and down a snowy road, I lined up with the 350 other participants, all of us eager to start moving. Just after the starting gun fired, I felt something cold and wet hit me. I thought the spectators had felt it was a good idea to toss snow at us – until the scent of wine reached my nose. Within moments of that celebratory spray, we’d entered the tunnels. I’d had little idea what to expect from the terrain inside, and it kept us guessing throughout the race, with asphalt road suddenly giving way to muddy cobblestones, mounds of dust and uneven dirt track – much of it dimly lit. The required headtorch was crucial, and some James Bond-style trainers that could transform at the push of a button from road shoes to trail shoes to track spikes wouldn’t have hurt, either.
The squiggly-lined map we’d been given as part of our race packs did hardly any justice to the convoluted, labyrinthine route, which twisted, turned and doubled back on itself over and over. I quickly lost all sense of whether I’d been down a particular corridor before or not, or if the people running towards me on the opposite side of the tape divider were ahead of or behind me in the race.
With its varied terrain,
85-95 per cent humidity in the cellars (it keeps the wine corks from drying out) and undulating course – the tunnels go as deep as 280ft (85m) and there are two outside segments, including a snowy climb up to the 5K timing mat and water stop at the top of a hill – the Wine Run isn’t a PB machine. It is, however, ideal for letting go of pace and running by feel – GPS is useless underground and there are no distance markers along the route, adding to the delirious disorientation.
The sounds of music and cheering echoed through the tunnels as I ran past some of the 1.5 million bottles of wine stored in the Milestii Mici cellars, plus huge oak wine barrels and metal tanks, some so rusted they looked like barnacle-encrusted relics retrieved from the bottom of the sea. Around one corner, a troupe of babushkas clapped and sang along to traditional fiddle and accordion music. Around another, young women in embroidered vests and long layered skirts waved flowers and doled out high fives. And then there were the dancers in flamencostyle dress twirling in front of a lit-up subterranean waterfall.
After entering the tunnels for a second time, the ground surface felt smoother and I started to run harder. As my legs began to burn, I wondered if I’d kicked it in too soon – I’d estimated there was about 4km left, but there was no way to know for sure, and the out-and-backs in the dark cellars seemed to go on endlessly. Suddenly, I rounded a corner to be met with a sea of glimmering gold. The finish line was in sight and beyond it was a banquet table surrounded by wine-drinking runners cloaked in gold foil blankets, still crowned with their headtorches, and descending on the pastry-laden buffet like ravenous medieval kings.