Wine region · Romania
Dealu Mare
Romania’s best-known red wine region, on south-facing Carpathian foothills at the same latitude as Bordeaux.
Medium-to-full bodied reds with dark plum, spice and moderate tannin. Good value and rarely seen in Britain.
About Dealu Mare
Dealu Mare — "the big hill" — runs along the southern foothills of the Carpathians at around 45° north, the same latitude as Bordeaux.
It is Romania’s principal region for serious red wine, growing both international varieties and Fetească Neagră, the country’s best indigenous red.
Romania is among the largest wine producers in Europe by volume and one of the least exported: most of its wine is drunk domestically, and the industry spent forty years under communist management geared to volume.
Fetească Neagră gives a medium-bodied, dark-fruited wine with a distinct dried-plum character.
No authority delimits this name or attaches rules to it. A country’s major wine division, usually containing appellations or sub-regions beneath it. That does not make it less real or less useful — it means nothing legal follows from it, and you will not generally find it on a label as a controlled designation.
Grapes
Wines from here
What to eat, and how to serve it
Derived from this region’s signature styles. Each is listed separately, because a region does not have one serving temperature.
Full-bodied dry red
Serve at 16–18°C (cool room temperature).
Try with roast chicken, fillet steak or grilled chicken.
Where to go next
Places worth trying if you like this one — neighbours, rivals, and the obvious step across.
- Thracian Valley — Southern Bulgaria’s main wine region, and the home of Mavrud — the country’s most distinctive red variety.
- Balaton — The regions around central Europe’s largest lake, whose volcanic northern shore makes Hungary’s most distinctive dry whites.
Approximate centroid: 45.10°, 26.30°. WineHQ stores coordinates only where it has them, and does not estimate boundaries it has not sourced.
Sources
Sources consulted