7 of the best Romanian wines
Our critic says Romanian wines are some of the best-value and most interesting in Europe - he shares his favourites.
Our critic says Romanian wines are some of the best-value and most interesting in Europe - he shares his favourites.
I tried my first Romanian wine in 1992. It was a homemade Pinot Noir poured from a three-litre plastic Fanta bottle. But a lot can happen in 30 years.
Today, Romania’s winemakers have turned that early, homemade promise into some of Europe’s best-value and most interesting wines.
I was in the country on a charitable trip just after the fall of Ceaușescu. Driving through Timișoara, there were still bullet-ridden buses that had been used as revolutionary barricades in 1989.
We headed to a small village in the Carpathian foothills, where we installed toilets, built a GP’s surgery and treated ailments, before kicking back each evening with local wine.
Then, as now, the Pinot Noir was fresh, soft and juicy. But today, it comes with rather more polish. Waitrose’s Blueprint Pinot Noir (12%, RRP £7.50) is fragrant and supple, and is good value enough to pour generously for friends.
In fact, Romania has emerged as one of the best places in the world for affordable Pinot Noir, a finicky grape that is infamously hard to get right.
Lautarul Pinot Noir 2024 (12.5%, RRP £8.99) shows what happens when you do, with a combination of generous red fruit and a subtle, spicy earthiness.
Winemakers have rediscovered Romania’s indigenous grape varieties, too. Curious Parallel Fetească Neagră 2024 (12%, RRP £11.99) has a name that means ‘black maiden’, and produces a dark, hearty red that works beautifully with stews and slow-cooked dishes.
It’s not the country’s only ‘maiden’ grape, either. Fetească Regală, the ‘royal maiden’, makes fragrant, versatile whites. M&S’s Expressions Fetească Regală (11.5%, RRP £8) gives you ripe stone fruit, citrus freshness and a floral hint of rose petals.
Asda’s Wine Atlas Fetească Regală (11.5%, RRP £7) is lusher and more tropical, and particularly good with spicy or pan-Asian food.
Wine has always been woven into Romania’s past, though not always benignly. In the 15th century, the country was ruled by Vlad Țepeș, aka Vlad the Impaler.
He once burned the capital’s beggars alive after luring them to a wine-fuelled banquet. His father was known as ‘Dracul’ – the Dragon – which means that Vlad was known as ‘Dracula’ – the little dragon.
And that’s why dragons still appear on Romanian wine labels – such as Dragon Hills Syrah 2023 (14%, RRP £10.99), a ripe, dense, berry-scented red that I always feel should be served with pork skewers. Not sure why.
But for Romania’s finest wines, we need a ‘Stirbey’. Prince Barbu Știrbey was a 19th-century prime minister, famed for his fine taste. So, the best Romanian wine was simply known as ‘Stirbey’.
Today, his great-granddaughter oversees the Prince Știrbey winery, whose Novac Sec (14%, RRP £24) is intense, complex and akin to Bordeaux-style reds at twice the price.
Romania may no longer be a global political power. But since my time in the Carpathians, it has entered a genuine golden age for wine. Although it's now bottled in glass, not plastic.
Hero image credit: Alamy
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