Romania wine

Romania is among the largest wine producers in Europe and among the least visible: the overwhelming majority is drunk domestically.

Forty years of communist management geared to volume left an industry that has spent the period since 1989 rebuilding around quality, helped by substantial EU restructuring funds.

Fetească Neagră is the indigenous red of note, and Fetească Albă and Fetească Regală the whites. Dealu Mare, on the Carpathian foothills at Bordeaux’s latitude, is the best-known region.

Romania has been making wine for several thousand years — Dacian viticulture is documented by Greek and Roman writers — and the modern industry sits on a large planted area concentrated around the Carpathian arc.

The Carpathians divide the country and shelter the southern foothills, where Dealu Mare produces the best-regarded reds at roughly Bordeaux's latitude. Moldavian Romania in the east and Transylvania in the centre are cooler and predominantly white.

Fetească Neagră is the indigenous red worth knowing, giving medium-bodied wines with dried plum and spice. Fetească Albă and Fetească Regală are the white counterparts, and the three are unrelated despite the shared name — fetească simply means "maiden".

Substantial EU restructuring funding since accession in 2007 has replanted a large share of the vineyard, and the quality gap between the old state-era wine and the current output is wide.