Solara, Orange, Viile Timisului, Romania, 2024

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

A mountainous terrain surrounds the vineyards and dominates the landscape.

Winemaking

Handpicked grown grapes were destemmed , lightly crushed then macerated with full skin contact for 3.5 weeks at low temperatures, until fully dry and completed 100% malolactic fermentation. 20% of the maceration was in clay amphorae and 80% stainless steel. Then all wines were blended and lightly oak aged for 2 months in 1 year old French barriques, before a natural cold stabilization, and bottling with no further SO2 addition or filtration.

Tasting Note

Dark straw in colour with orange hints, the nose is a delicate mélange of quince, poire william and a hint of vanilla. A complex and structured wine, with elegant but discreet fruit flavours of stone fruits, backed up with a powerful tannin structure and long finish. A natural minimal intervention wine which is well balanced and structured yet pure and incredibly fresh.

Food Matching

Hard and semi hard cheese, turbot, tuna steak and chicken.