Danube Terraces

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).

The Danube Terraces (Terasele Dunării) are a narrow, long wine region along the river in the south-east of the Romanian Plain. Two podgorii – Ostrov opposite Silistra with Băneasa, Oltina and Aliman, and Greaca south-east of Bucharest – plus independent centres at Zimnicea, Giurgiu and Fetești. The climate is hot and dry, the soils loess and sand over limestone. Historically the region stood for table grapes (Greaca) and simple whites; today Ostrov and Oltina also produce reds from Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Fetească Neagră with noticeable warmth.