Umbrele Pinot Grigio Rosé, Vilie Timisului, Romania, 2020

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

Harvesting time is determined through monitoring the ripeness of the grapes After selection, the grapes are destalked, crushed, and the must including skins, is cooled. After maceration thecrushed grape mass is softly pressed. One hundred percent Pinot Grigio grapes are pressed with just the right amount of contact with their skins to give it its delightful colour and character. The grapes are then processed in the tried and true ways of the best white wines in controlled temperatures.

Oak Ageing

No oak ageing

Tasting Note

A short fermentation on the skins gives this modern style Pinot Grigio a delicate pink coppery colour, a crisp and intense aroma as well as a harmonious and fruity taste with notes of peach. A lovely pale colour is the entree into a light, citrusy, floral aroma of almond, pear and green apple.