Feteasacă Albă’s 1000 Faces
A friend of mine drives back and forth from Istanbul to Austria and back every summer. Last year she drove through Romania on the way back home and stopped a winery where she picked up a couple bottles of wine for me. Fantastic friend that! I know that Romania has a wealth of native grapes and I’ve had a few, but only in blends which made me even more excited to try these.
1000 de Chipuri
Located just north of the Bulgaria-Romania border and a bit west of the Black Sea is 1000 de Chipuri. The name means 1000 faces and pays homage to the people who work in wine. For them, wine is more than chateaux, domains, and famous labels. It’s the faces of people, whether we know them or not, who do not want to produce millions of bottles but produce happiness on the faces of a few people.
1000 de Chipuri began in 2007 with the preparation and planting of the winery’s
Fințeşti-Naeni vineyard in Romania’s Dealu Mare wine region. The soils here are largely Sarmatian limestones, clays, sandstones, and dacitic tuffs, along with deposits of fine sand alternating with gravel and sit at about 350 meters above sea level.
The winery has 63 hectares today, planted to a mix of native and international grapes including: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Pinot Noir, Shiraz (Syrah), Cabernet Franc, Fetească Neagră, Fetească Albă, Chardonnay, Italian Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc, and Romanian Tâmiaosă.
1000 de Chipuri Iordache, 2021
The Iordache is made with 100% Feteasacă Albă. According to Wine Searcher, “Feteasca means “maiden” in Romanian and is shared by three distinct varieties: Feteasacă Regala (royal maiden), Feteasacă Neagra (black maiden) and Feteasca Albă, or white maiden, which refers to the color of the grapes”. Feteasacă Albă is the original from which the other two have sprung.
Brilliant, very pale (almost colorless) in the glass. What it “lacked” in color it sure made up for in aroma! Very aromatic really with apricot and white peach swirled with cream, and notes of jasmine and mint. There was a fair amount of weight on the palate (maybe a tiny bit of residual sugar?) but it also had nice acidity with moderate alcohol at 12.6%. Silky smooth on the palate with fulsome peaches and cream flavors and whiffs of jasmine perfume that all just slide right down the throat. Really lovely.
I have yet to visit Romania and (based on this wine alone!) clearly that is my loss.