The biggest wine collection in the world is Mile?tii Mici in Moldova, a 250-kilometre underground wine city holding 1.5 to 2 million bottles. Bern’s Steak House in Florida is the largest in the United States, with more than 600,000 bottles.
We rebuilt this list in 2026 around collections whose bottle counts we could check, and ranked them by size. Private cellars of collectors are rarely audited, so we ended up with six that stand on solid counts and a short section of private cellars that surfaced in sales.
Which are the biggest wine collections in the world? (at a glance)
| Rank | Collection | Bottles (reported) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mile?tii Mici, Moldova | 1.5 to 2 million |
| 2 | Cricova, Moldova | about 1.25 million |
| 3 | Bern’s Steak House, Tampa, Florida | over 600,000 |
| 4 | La Tour d’Argent, Paris | more than 450,000 |
| 5 | Graycliff Hotel, Nassau, Bahamas | over 275,000 (2023) |
| 6 | Restaurant Latour, Great Gorge, New Jersey | 100,000 to 135,000 |
The 6 biggest wine collections
1. Mile?tii Mici, Moldova: 1.5 to 2 million bottles
Mile?tii Mici is a former limestone quarry turned underground wine city outside Chi?in?u. The cellar complex stretches for about 250 kilometres of tunnels, of which only about 120 kilometres are in use, and the Guinness World Records 2007 Yearbook noted it for having the largest wine collection in the world, at 2 million bottles (other sources give 1.5 million). Streets inside carry names and staff move between sections by vehicle. The number rests on that 2007 listing and is the record to beat.
2. Cricova, Moldova: about 1.25 million bottles
Cricova is Moldova’s other great underground winery, in a town 15 km north of the capital, with cellars described as reaching about 100 metres below ground. Reference listings give 1.25 million bottles of rare wine, which puts it second to Mile?tii Mici in the same country. We rank it second on the stated stock, a reference-listing figure, not an audited count.
3. Bern’s Steak House, Tampa, Florida: over 600,000 bottles
Founded in 1956, Bern’s holds what it describes as the largest private wine collection in the world, over 600,000 bottles. About 100,000 are in the cellar at the restaurant and another 500,000 in a building next door. The collection has never been fully catalogued, and in 2011 staff found a 1947 Château Latour valued at $30,000. Other finds include a 1957 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti estimated at $25,000.
4. La Tour d’Argent, Paris: more than 450,000 bottles
The Paris restaurant’s guarded cellar holds more than 450,000 bottles, valued in 2009 at 25 million euros, and its list offers about 15,000 wines in a 400-page book. A routine inventory in 2024 found more than 1.5 million euros of wine missing. The restaurant buys young wines and stores them until ready, which is why the cellar keeps growing.
5. Graycliff Hotel, Nassau, Bahamas: over 275,000 (2023) bottles
A 2023 trade listing credits the Graycliff restaurant with more than 275,000 bottles and 5,325 selections, and it has held the Grand Award since 1988. Older tourism pages say 250,000. The hotel occupies an old Nassau mansion and also runs a cognac collection of over 9,000 bottles.
6. Restaurant Latour, Great Gorge, New Jersey: 100,000 to 135,000 bottles
Created in 2004 by financier Gene Mulvihill at the Crystal Springs Resort, Restaurant Latour has a cellar variously reported at 100,000 to 135,000 bottles over 9,100 labels. Mulvihill funded a nuclear magnetic resonance scanner at UC Davis that checks sealed bottles for oxidation and volatile acidity without opening them. Bottles that fail the scan are returned or discarded.
What about the big private collections?
The first edition of this article listed individual collectors whose cellars reportedly ran from about 2,000 bottles (Aubrey McClendon’s, sold at auction) through 4,000 (the chef Charlie Trotter’s, sold at auction) and 10,000 (restaurateur Leslie Rudd’s Napa focus) to about 65,000 (Tawfiq Khoury, who sold roughly a quarter of it through Christie’s in 1997). Those are old, self-reported counts, so we treat them as context, not as ranked entries.
How we put this list together
We ranked collections by the largest bottle count we could find in an official, trade or reference listing, and noted the year or source type. Counts change as cellars grow and as bottles are drunk, sold or stolen, so treat each figure as approximate.
FAQ
What is the biggest wine collection in the world?
Mile?tii Mici in Moldova, noted by the Guinness World Records 2007 Yearbook for a collection of 2 million bottles.
What is the biggest wine cellar in the United States?
Bern’s Steak House in Tampa, Florida, with over 600,000 bottles across its restaurant cellar and a building next door.
How many bottles are in La Tour d’Argent’s cellar?
More than 450,000, valued at 25 million euros in 2009.
Why do bottle counts differ between sources?
Cellars are rarely audited, and counts change over time. Mile?tii Mici is cited at both 1.5 and 2 million bottles, for example.
Can you visit these wine collections?
Mile?tii Mici, Cricova and Bern’s all take visitors in some form, and Graycliff and La Tour d’Argent let diners order from their cellars. Check each venue before travelling.
Last updated: October 2026.
