Umbrele, Pinot Noir, Vilie Timisului, Romania, 2022

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

100% estate grown grapes from the Dealul Uberland vineyard. The altitude here is around 250 m, with soil rich in iron oxide and loess on fractured limestone bedrock.

Winemaking

25% of the grapes were transfered directly into 1000 Kg bins without being destemmed then sealed and put through a carbonic macceration fermentation for 10 days in order to produce the strawberry fruit part of the blend. The remaining 75%was destemmed lightly crushed and then macerated and fermented normally at 25°C in stainless steel automated fermenters. Both wines were then seperately pressed and the noncarbonic maceration wine was lightly oaked for 2 months before blending.

Oak Ageing

Time: 2 Months
Type: French Oak
% wine oaked: 100
% new oak: None

Tasting Note

Ruby red in colour. Gorgeous flavours, almost syrupy in its concentration. Dark, rich and potent, with layers of complex black cherry, raspberry and cinnamon. Deep, with pretty fruit cake and spicy aromatics.

Food Matching

Pasta with mushroom ragu.