Calusari, Pinot Grigio, 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

The winery has been fully fitted out with stainless steel, automatic temperature controlled tanks for fermenting and storing the wine. The primary vinification facility has been completely renewed with the best possible equipment for gently crushing, de stemming, pressing the grapes- in order to be able to maintain all the quality in the grapes. All of the grapes for this wine come from their own estate and are harvested early in the morning to avoid the heat which would otherwise cause the juice to become pink during fermentation.

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 pressing and decanted into stainless steel temperature controlled tanks for 48 to 72 hours, until perfectly clarified. The clear juice is transferred to stainless steel fermenters and inoculate with selected yeast to begin fermentation which takes 3 weeks at 10°C. The wine is kept on fine lees until bottling.

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

Serve at 8°C to 10°C with chicken, fish dishes, light seafood dishes.