Umbrele Pinot Grigio, Vilie Timisului, Romania, 2021

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. Handpicked estate grown grapes were harvested early in the morning –to avoid heat which causes Pinot Grigio to become too pink during vinification.

Winemaking

The grapes were lightly crushed and then further cooled to 8° C before a gentle pressing in state of the art vacuum presses. Free run juice is separated from the heavier press fractions and decanted in stainless steel temperature controlled tanks – for 48 to 72 hours - until perfectly clarified. The clear juice is transferred to stainless steel fomenters and inoculated with selected yeast to begin fermentation which took 3 weeks at 10°C. The wine is kept on fine lees until bottling.

Oak Ageing

No oak ageing

Tasting Note

Lovely, opulent aromas of grapefruit and peach follow through to a lithe body, with loads of fruit as well as abundant melon and apple character and citrusy acidity.

Food Matching

Thai Green curry sits well with this.