Dobrogea

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).

Dobrogea is a loess plateau between the Danube, the Danube Delta and the Black Sea – Romania's region with the most sunshine and the least rainfall, tempered by the sea breeze. Three podgorii: Murfatlar west of Constanța on limestone and loess, world-famous for semi-sweet and sweet wines from Chardonnay, Pinot Gris and Muscat Ottonel and today equally for dry reds; Sarica-Niculițel in the Măcin mountains, the country's oldest range, with viticulture since antiquity; Istria-Babadag on the edge of the delta with young quality estates. Greeks, Romans and Genoese traded wine here – Tomis (Constanța) and Histria were wine ports of antiquity.