One of Romania’s most promising grape varieties is called Feteasca Regala. It literally means The Royal Maiden. The variety has shown great versatility and is able to both deliver incredibly charming white wines intended to be drunk young, and it can deliver more robust, ambitious white wines that can develop positively in the cellar over several years of aging. This versatility is further explored by La Sapata with the wine here, an orange wine made at Feteasca Regala.
Orange wine is very briefly explained a wine that is made like red wine, but from green grapes (white wine grapes). When green grapes are vinified, as red wine was, this roughly means that the wine is made with long maceration on skins, seeds and stems – both before, during and after fermentation. Maceration is very simple, that you let the skins, seeds and any stems remain in the juice instead of removing them, so that coloring and tanning substances (tannin) are absorbed in the juice instead of being removed. In the production of normal white wine, skins/cores/stems are removed precisely to avoid color and tannins. When producing orange wine, you want to get the color and tannin from the peels.
The wine here is made with 6 months of maceration on skins and seeds.
Colour: Beautiful orange-golden amber.
Nose: Wow, fiercely seductive nose with an almost highly aromatic character. Scents of flower beds, all the roses of the rainbow, Provencal pot pourri, apricots, peaches, lychee, some fresh and uplifting citrus and finally also a little black bergamot. Very complex nose that you can only be excited about.
Tasting notes: The taste offers a bit of a contrast to the nose. The taste appears more typically orange with clear structure from the tannin and is fuller and more “serious” than the nose suggests. The aftertaste is long with both an almost salty minerality, tannin and the typical orange wine note of bergamot. Amongst all this there are of course also notes of all the ripe fruits, berries and flowers that you found on the nose, but to a much more subdued degree.
Serving suggestions: Very versatile in its use. Best served slightly chilled at 10-12 degrees as an aperitif or with fish, poultry, light meat. Can possibly be served warmer than 12 degrees if it is to match richer food.
La Sapata Crama Delta Dunarii is located in the Danube Delta in the eastern part of Romania. The delta flows into the Black Sea to the east, and to the north the area shares a border with Ukraine. The climate in the Danube Delta is characterized by cold winters and hot, dry summers. Romania has a long tradition of wine production, and here you can find both well-known, international varieties such as riesling and merlot, and local specialties such as babeasca neagra, feteasca neagra, feteasca regala and a number of other hard-to-pronounce (but excellent) grapes.
La Sapata cultivates its approximately 20 hectares organically and with respect for the nature around the fields, but they also have a goal of social sustainability. In recent decades, the Romanian rural areas have been gradually depopulated as more young people travel to the cities, and La Sapata therefore works with an “ethical commitment” to curb the large emigration by creating jobs for the local population in the rural areas.
