Banat

With around 180,000 hectares of vines Romania is Europe's sixth-largest wine producer and one of the continent's oldest wine countries: viticulture is documented here for more than 6,000 years, and Herodotus wrote about the wine trade on the Black Sea coast. The country lies on the latitude of France; the Carpathians divide it into three climate zones – Atlantic-influenced Transylvania, continental Moldavia, and Mediterranean-tinged Wallachia and Dobrogea. After phylloxera (from 1872) the vineyards were replanted with French varieties, but the native grapes survived: Fetească Albă, Fetească Regală and Fetească Neagră, Grasă and Frâncușă in Cotnari, Tămâioasă Românească, Băbească Neagră, Crâmpoșie and Negru de Drăgășani. Origins follow Order 225/2006: eight wine regions, 37 podgorii (wine districts) and more than 150 wine centres; protected origins carry the DOC label (Denumire de Origine Controlată).

Banat is Romania's smallest wine region but one of the most visible abroad: Cramele Recaș east of Timișoara is the country's largest wine exporter. The region lies in the triangle between the Mureș, the Banat Mountains and the Serbian border; the climate is warm temperate with Mediterranean influence, and soils range from black earth and sand on the plain (Teremia Mare) to loam and limestone on the hill edges (Recaș, Silagiu near Buziaș, Tirol, Moldova Nouă on the Danube). Banat Swabians, settled from the 18th century, brought cellar technique and varieties such as Creață (Banat Riesling); today Fetească Regală, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir and the old red Cadarcă dominate.