Exclusive wine cellar at Refsnes Gods – experience wine in historic surroundings

Beneath the thick stone walls of the manor’s main building rests one of Norway’s most legendary wine cellars – a place where wine and history have evolved together over centuries.
The vaulted ceilings date back to the 18th century, and the massive stone walls have housed everything from potatoes and beer barrels to – eventually – thousands of bottles of wine.

Originally used for storage after the Meyer family added the kitchen and towers in the 1850s, the cellar’s first documented use for beverages was in the 1930s, when Olav and Ragna Fjeld opened the Castle Restaurant. The cellar was then used to keep beer from Moss Brewery cool – proudly featured on the restaurant menu in 1938.

In the 1990s, the cellar was transformed from bottle storage into a cultural treasure, as it was opened to guests for the first time. This marked the beginning of a new era – with wine, especially from France, taking centre stage. Today, the collection includes around 5,000 bottles from all over the world.

The heart of the cellar is the extraordinary Bordeaux collection, with bottles of Château Mouton Rothschild from every year between 1945 and 2000 – each label designed by world-renowned artists. The oldest red wine is a Château Haut-Brion from 1916, still bearing its original hand-glued label – a tribute to craftsmanship and the passage of time.

The collection also includes bottles from the so-called “New World”, with rare wines from South Africa, the USA, Australia, and Chile. Among the cellar’s oldest treasures is a bottle of Madeira from the year 1822.

This is a cellar where stone and silence have created the perfect environment for maturation – and where every bottle tells a story. With its patina and depth, the wine cellar is not just a storage room, but a chamber of time, aroma, flavour, and passion.