In July 2008 I explored Romania’s vineyards – for the second time. The first occasion had been during the economic turmoil which followed the fall of Ceausescu.
Poverty was everywhere back then: I remember seeing a man ladle water out of puddle into a bucket. What did he need it for? I don’t know, but in the heart of Europe it seemed a succinct definition of absolute hardship. The wineries we visited then were struggling to make headway under profoundly difficult conditions.
This time the country was a lot cheerier, even if most people weren’t much better off. Equipment (cars, mobile phones) are easy to replace, but the built fabric of life will take decades to renovate. The scenes which unfold daily in the Romanian countryside remain some of the most astonishing I have ever seen, since they thread back to a time which is utterly lost now in Western Europe. There is a flavour of this in the beginning of the article below (an edited version of one which appeared in the Financial Times on August 16th 2008).
Roma vineyard workers for DavinoIn summer, it seemed bucolically idyllic, full of easy-going human contact and the slow roundedness of pre-industrial agriculture. Yet winters are astonishingly cold here (Romania has one of the most continental climate patterns of all wine-producing nations), and struggling to fetch water from a village well on a morning when the temperature is -20°C, then take it back to a house heated only by a single stove in order to wash a few dishes, must be misery. I suspect the hardship outweighs the bucolic contentment, tallied annually.
My journey took me along the predominantly south-facing slopes of the Carpathians, which is probably where Romania’s finest wines will emerge. Will they be red or white? I had assumed the former, but after my visit I’m not sure that the country won’t eventually perform better with the latter, like a kind of easterly Alsace. Pinot Noir remains the tantalising prospect it has always been here, with the occasional wine showing astonishing assurance. (It’s a shame they’re only occasional – yet Burgundy itself is hardly a paragon of consistency.)
Romania is huge, though, and there were at least four major regions I didn’t visit: high Transylvania, nestling behind the arc of the Carpathians and certainly a white-wine location; the vineyards between Romania and Moldova, where the country’s historically renowned sweet wines came from; the Black Sea vineyards; and the vineyards in the west of Romania near the Hungarian border.
Anyway, here is the article plus a few of the photographs I took during the trip. I look forward to a third visit in a few years.
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A herd of goats passes the Carl Reh wineryWomen chat over the buckets at the village well; men knock plums from a tree with sticks in the rain; small boys gently twig the flies from the family cow as it grazes. Hay from the fields is forked, early in warm summer mornings, onto carts which docile horses then pull back to the village, while flocks of sheep and goats trot briskly in the other direction, whistled by gnarled men and their dogs towards a day’s grazing. Gnarled men, that is, who stop whistling the moment their mobile phone rings.
In one of Europe’s most remarkable rural landscapes, simultaneously modern and pre-industrial, Romanian wine is struggling to reinvent itself. The country has been a subdued presence on foreign wine markets for the last two decades. The difficulties of land restitution following the dramatic collapse of Communist rule at Christmas 1989 resulted not in the hoped-for surge of opportunity, but in a lost decade. That transition is now ending, helped by EU accession in January 2007 and its SAPARD funds.
Much is expected of Romanian wine -- by the few who take an interest in it. Since Trajan’s first-century Dacian campaigns, depicted on his column near the Quirinal Hill in Rome, the country’s magnetic field has lain westward. The Romanian language itself is testament to this cross-fertilization; wine, too, lies close to the heart of the country’s sense of self. The prime fact of Romanian geography, the great boomerang of the Carpathians lying across the heart of the country, provides not only a cool Transylvanian plateau suitable for crisp whites, but a long line of propitious south-facing foothills, already planted to vines in Roman times, above the Wallachian plain; there is limestone near the Black Sea coast. It has native grape varieties of great potential, if fearsome orthography.
Challenges include its extreme continental climate. Hot summer days in summer routinely exceed 40°C/104°F, while temperatures sink below -25°C/-13°F on cold winter nights, so you’ll never see olive groves keeping vineyards company here. The depth and richness of Romanian soils are not always ideal – for viticulture, though they look increasingly attractive as grain prices rise. Almost all the best vineyards in the country are under 10 years old, while the older vineyards are a tangle of workhorse varieties or worse (80 per cent of the wine sold in Romania is unbottled, and almost half its vines are hybrids). Even among the quality-minded, there is too much recourse to oak barrels as a panacea, at least for this taster.
Jakob and Ileana Kripp of Prince Stirbey EstateForeign investors, local entrepreneurs and returning aristocrats form a three-pronged vanguard. The Prince Stirbey Estate at Dragasani is an example of the last, reclaimed by Baroness Ileana Kripp-Costinescu and her husband, Baron Jakob Kripp, in 2001. On spacious slopes above the Olt river, they produce a wide range of wines in clean, lean and angular style: a conscious contrast to traditional Romanian practices, which favour low levels of residual sugar in both red and whites. Comte Guy de Poix, Corsican aristocrat and ex-Val d’Isère dentist, has been building up a domain at Ceptura since 1994; this warm sub-zone of Dealu Mare is thought to be one of the best spots in Romania for red wines, though he says that “it’s too early to be pronouncing on terroir yet here in Romania.
Dan Balaban and Bogdan KostachescuWe still haven’t got the vineyards planted properly and we can’t move forward until we’ve done that.” Also in Ceptura is Davino, a small winery run by the cigar-chomping Dan Balaban with single-minded winemaker Bogdan Costachescu. These are probably the most assured wines produced today in Romania, and the range includes two fine whites of depth and succulence as well as unique Romanian flavours: the blended Domaine Ceptura (a combination of Sauvignon Blanc with Welschriesling and the local Feteasca Alba) and the Alba Valahica (a pure Feteasca Alba).
The British Halewood Vintners is a long-term investor in Romania, as is the German company Carl Reh (which has had a lawyer working full time on vineyard acquisitions in the Oprisor area close to the Danube since 1999). Both have mixed quality ranges with occasional stars, often based on Pinot Noir. Their domination of export markets is likely to be challenged by ambitious newcomer Domeniul Coroanei, a former crown domain in Segarcea, where cardiologist Cornelia Anghel and her husband Mihai, a local grain farmer and trader, have overseen an investment of E18 million and planted 250 ha; early results from 2007 look very promising, with assured varietal renditions of Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay and Merlot as well as a deliciously oily, spicy white from Feteasca Regala.
Historically, Romania’s greatest wine was the gently sweet white Cotnari, based on two more intriguing indigenous white varieties: Grasa (the ‘fat one’) and Tamaioasa Romaneasca (the ‘frankincense grape’) grown in the northeast of the country, facing Moldova. Standards there have long been disappointing, but the fact that the team of Italo-Romanian investors behind the Vinate winery in Zoresti has recently bought 60 ha in Cotnari suggests that this wine, once considered a rival to Tokaji, may return to dazzle again. <<
Buying notes
Romania’s transitional status as a wine exporter is underlined by the fact that few of its best wines are yet on sale in the UK. The producers don’t mind: as in Bulgaria, increasingly prosperous locals keep business buoyant. Vinexpert (www.evinoteca.ro) is a good source in Bucharest and online for Davino, Comte de Poix (Serve or Terra Romana) and Dominiul Coroanei. The wines of Prince Stirbey are, by contrast, available in the UK via www.ivintners.co.uk: I recommend the crisp yet gently fragrant white 2006 Feteasca Regala (£7.78) and the more aromatically exuberant dry white 2006 Tamaioasa Romaneasca (£7.78), though I wish both were a little less steely-dry and had more of the density and saturation of flavour one finds in the best Alsace or Austrian whites. (NB: prices quoted were those of August 2008.)
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