Transylvania has always been a bit of white whale for us. I don’t think you can get further away from what we think of as Europe while still being in Europe. This is where horse carts often outnumber cars, self sufficient agriculture is the norm, there are more fortified Churches than anywhere else in Europe, and where Vlad the Impaler once vertically impaled nearly 20,000 people on display near the city of Târgoviște to intimidate the Ottomans. Literally translating to "beyond the forest," it also has an unbroken winegrowing tradition going back at least 2000+ years. It’s also believed that Dionysus/Bacchus was born in Thrace in modern day Romania. It’s a surreal place where the language is Balkan Romance, the food is Hungarian with some key distinctions, and where the imprints of both the Middle Ages and Communism are frozen in time.


Skipping over vast swaths of history and using gross oversimplification in order to get to the wines at hand, a condensed historical refresher is still helpful. From 1003-1526, the Kingdom of Hungary ruled. Under King Stephen I in the 10th Century, Queen Gisela brought in Germans (Swabians) from her native Bavaria. It’s then a long tug of war between the Ottomans and Hapsburgs starting in the early 1500s until the Hapsburgs finally pushed out the Ottomans in 1691 during the Great Turkish War.

Romania’s official independence and its constitution didn't arrive until 1881. Through it all, Transylvania always fought to be a separate entity within the Hapsburg and Ottoman periods. WWI causes the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Romania adds Transylvania and a few other regions back inside its borders. Things get messy in between WWI and WWII. Romania starts supplying a lot of oil to Hitler in exchange for being left alone. This doesn’t last long and meanwhile Hungary takes back Transylvania by force. Romania ends up switching sides and fighting with the Red Army to defeat German and Hungarian forces. Romania gets Transylvania back again. This was then followed by Soviet occupation and eventually becoming a Communist state in 1947. Romania does not enter this arrangement quietly and experiences some of the fiercest extrajudicial killings and purges of any Bloc country. And I don’t think this gets the attention it deserves, but Romania’s final autocrat Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife Elena were captured after fleeing by helicopter and then killed by firing squad on Christmas Day 1989 following violent protests. This effectively ended the Communist era.

During all of this, agriculture was at the heart of the Romanian character and economy. After WWI, it’s estimated that 90% of Romania’s agricultural land was owned in parcel’s no larger than 5 hectares – massive fragmentation. This was then collectivized by force during Communism. A lot of hybrids (Labrusca x Vinifera) were planted and the typical story of quantity over quality ensued. There were weird moments like PepsiCo importing Romanian wines in the 1970s under their Monsieur Henri Selection series (the wine was called Premiat) in exchange for cola concentrate. Suffice to say, this was not a good period. When Romania privatized land post Communism, it resulted in decades of legal battles, corruption, and confusion. This also led to little to no investment and for those willing to invest, often hundreds of land contracts were necessary to secure as little as 20 hectares. Today, the country is 5th under vine in Europe, but many estimate that the average vineyard holding is 0.2 hectares, and just over 30% of the country’s vineyards are farmed in 10 hectares or more. Romania is essentially a net importer.

In a feeble attempt to change these export figures, we’d like to introduce our first Romanian producer: Weingut Edgar Brutler.