How Romania is shaping its future as a leading wine-producing country building upon an illustrious yet tumultuous heritage
Romania is at last starting to gain international recognition for the thrilling quality of its best wines. Deserved and long overdue acknowledgement for a country with a unique viticultural heritage and a surfeit of unique grape varieties producing wines with singular flavours. Some of them can trace their lineage back to Ancient Greece, the cradle of modern wine culture as we know it.
Indeed, the southeastern European country is no stranger to the vine. The earliest evidence of the existence of viticulture in Romania are vineyard tools found on the Catalina Hill, in Cotnari, dating back to the 5th century BC. After the Greeks established a thriving wine scene in the 7th century BC, a succession of European powers – including the Romans and Byzantines – produced aromatic sweet wines in clay amphorae, prized both locally and as exports. The Roman poet Ovid extolled the virtues of Romanian viticulture in his later writings, despite being banished to the port of Constanța, on the Black Sea, by Emperor Augustus in AD 8. Not long after that, chaos descended when the Western Roman Empire fell and, like in other of the territories under its domain, viticulture was put on the back burner as rival armies fought over the spoils.
During the Middle Ages however, a dramatic revolution took place in the vineyards of Romania. Christian institutions, particularly monasteries, took an active role in the cultivation of the vine, building centres of worship and meditation in the Moldavia and Muntenia regions, such as the Dealu Monastery in Târgoviște. The country’s area under vine increased significantly in the 1400s and Romania established itself as the class act of the Balkans, beginning to understand the diversity, uniqueness and potential of its terroirs.
Exports to neighbouring countries and indeed Western Europe rose off the back of sustained investment and endless proselytising – not least from the aristocracy. But although white wines were more highly regarded at the time (such as the sweet Cotnari, a rival to Hungary’s Tokaji), Romania’s red varieties became the latest fashion in the 18th century.
