Philip Cox and his wife, Elvira of Romania’s principle winery, Cramele Recas looks forward to meeting both new and familiar writers and buyers at this year’s Emerging Regions Tasting, and then the Specialist Importers Trade Tasting – both occurring next month.
Dating back over 6,000 years, Romania has one of the oldest winemaking traditions. Recas, based in Banat, where legend has it Bacchus spent his childhood, has won a number of substantial listings in the UK in recent years, to the extent it today exports over two million bottles of wine annually – a combination of renditions of international grape varieties such as Pinot Grigio, as well as the local Feteasca Regala, Feteasca Alba, Negru de Dragasani and Cadarca. Quite a different story to Cox’s early days in the country, whereby, in 1991, he recalls queueing for “a lump of butter at 7am.”
