Made In Romania - OId World Meets New World

In 1998, Philip Cox, along with his Romanian wife Elvira and two other couples, all clubbed together to buy a run-down, former state-owned winery with 650 hectares of vineyards in the western region of Viile Timisului, an area that’s been geographically compared with Tuscany. With no access to bank loans, they had to hit the ground running and needed to sell large quantities of wine from the outset. So they were forced to sell the wine cheaply in order to be able to pay their staff and meet operational costs.

They soon carved a niche and gradually, they began to re-invest in new stainless steel tanks and state-of-the-art equipment in the cellars as well as luring international winemakers from Australia and Spain to craft wines following traditional methods but with a New World feel. They also started a re-planting program introducing quality vine stock of international varietals to sit alongside their indigenous Romanian ones. The transformation was both impressive and rapid.

By 2015, Recas sold 11 million bottles of wine with a decent chunk of that finding its way into the UK market. Last year, it was 30 million bottles! The UK is still an important export market but since Brexit, there’s been a natural shift of focus and now Germany and the Netherlands have taken priority.

Recas’ success has inspired literally scores of new wineries to start up with many focusing on more premium wines, an area that Recas themselves are keen to develop next. The acquisition of vineyards is a step towards this goal and to date, they’ve nearly doubled their original holdings to 1250 hectares.

With over 20 different grape varieties planted, they make a staggering number of different wines under various labels including a highly successful range of natural wines made from organically certified grapes and with no additions or filtration. More on these shortly.

At Inn Express, we’ve been stocking a good selection of these wines for a few years now and have built up quite a loyal following. Here’s a quick overview of the wines we carry.

Calusari Pinot Grigio

This little belter regularly outdoes classic versions from Italy when blind tasted together. This simply carries a little more weight and flavour intensity making an all-round more interesting and enjoyable quaffer for the same sort of money.

Calusari Pinot Grigio Rosé

Like the white version, this has more aroma and fruit intensity than its counterparts from the Veneto whilst still retaining that lovely pale pink hue. This is seriously gluggable!

Calusari Pinot Noir

This was the wine that really made me eat the humble pie! Authentic Pinot characteristics with light, silky tannins and incredible drinkability. This has always punched well above its weight.

Solara Natural Orange

The first of the natural wines that were launched back in 2017. A great example of an ‘orange’ skin-contact wine made cleanly and with a lovely pithy texture. This is still a great value intro into the natural wine category.

Solara Natural Rosé

A clever little Cabernet Merlot blend that’s as fresh as the label depicts, with tangy fruit and crunchy acidity. Oh and the shade of pink looks very Provençal too.

Solara Natural Red

The theme of this red is juice, juice, juice! Organically grown Pinot Noir and Merlot combine to create a blueberry/brambly juice sensation with super-smooth tannins and just the right level of acidity to keep the whole wine lifted and fragrant too.

If I can offer you one word of advice, slip at least one of these wines onto your list and watch the reaction from your punters when they realise the wine they’ve just devoured came from Romania!