In December of 2017 I fell in love with Romanian wine. I was on a budget and looking for something a decent, but not mass produced; Champagne taste on a beer budget, as they say. In a small store just North of where I work in Lincoln Square, I found a corner store that has a large specialty selection of Eastern European wines at prices comparable to anything on the bottom shelf of the grocery store. It seemed too good to be true, but I bought a bottle, because the worst thing that could happen was that it would be a learning experience. As it turns out, I had just stumbled down a rabbit hole that would led me into a series of incredible wine experiences over the next year.
Up until this time I bought my wines based on either 1) a region I was vaguely familiar with, but wanted to learn more about or 2) Bordeaux. Trying my first Romanian wine wasn’t necessarily an epiphany, but it was a positive experience. It showed me that good wine could come from places outside of France, Italy, California, Spain, and sometimes Germany, despite conventional wisdom. So, I went back and bought another, and then another. I started reading up on the regions and regional grapes and then I did have an epiphany, a wine so mindblowingly good I would have put it up against anything I had tried before. It changed how I looked at wine, how I shopped for wine, and has rewarded me over and over during the course of the last year. This wine, Nomad Fetească Neagră, was one of those experiences.
Produced in the region of Dealu Mare, Southeast of the Carpatian Mountains, specifically near the village of Săhăteni, this is Nomad Fetească Neagră. According to Aurelia Visinescu’s website, the Nomad line is intended to represent a modern style of wine. My previous experiences with Fetească Neagră have been fairly lackluster. I’ve often told people, if you plan to try Romanian wine, buy white not red, because that is where I found my superior experiences, until I bought this bottle. This is, hands down, the best Fetească Neagră wine I have ever had. It’s also the only one I’ve had that has seen oak aging, which it responded to very well. Flavors of plum and cranberry mingled with clove for a complex wine, with solid tannin, and a long finish.
My introduction to Romanian wines has emboldened me to explore several new areas and to never be dissuaded by regional criticisms. While that attitude has led me to discover great wines from many places, I keep coming back to Romania. There’s something about their wines that just excites me and no matter how many times I tell people, they still seem surprised that I’m endorsing wine from that region.
Let’s be perfectly frank, I’ve had more bad wine from California than anywhere else in the world, where’s the risk in trying something new?