Solara, Natural Red, Panciu, Romania, 2023

Producer Profile

Back in 1988, three families decided to invest in a winery in Romania, starting with 650 hectares of slightly unloved vineyards and a rusty, once state-owned winery.

Yet Englishman Philip Cox and his Romanian wife Elvira, have turned the Cramele Recas Estate into the most successful winery in Romania. Recas are now recognised globally for their impressive scale and breadth of fascinating wines, including natural and orange wine from organic grapes. Despite the scale the emphasis is on making good wines that over-deliver, and as a result they’ve struck on a magic formula that has seen sales and demand boom. Vineyards are a combination of evolved plantings from 1447 and more recent planting, whilst the winery has seen significant investment and boasts state of the art facilities where innovation thrives. Recas are in every way a modern, dynamic winery, whose open minded approach and quality sets them apart … a winery you really can’t ignore.

Viticulture

Winemaking team, Hartley Smithers from Australia, and Nora Iriate from Spain, together veterans of over 50 harvests in all the world's wine producing regions, oversee the production of all the wines from grapes till bottle with a fanatical attention to detail. The philosophy is simple- to apply the absolute best production methods to every single wine, to enhance and preserve the natural quality of the grapes, and provide a consistently high quality product every year for every level of wine made.

Winemaking

Grapes were destemmed, lightly crushed and then macerated for 5 days on the skins. No additives at all were used in the winery. After 10 days on skins the free run wine was drained, and the free run juice fermented, after which there was a full natural malolactic fermentation in stainless steel tanks. A natural cold stablisation in exterior tanks during the winter. Finally the wine was bottled with no filtration and no additives.

Oak Ageing

Tasting Note

This natural wine is chocca block packed full of bramble fruit notes with raspberry and blackberry dominating the aroma, smooth and juicy with complex notes of blueberry and moderate acidity and smooth tannins on the finish.

Food Matching

T- Bone steak, wild boar ragu or rich pasta dishes.