On Friday, 15 September 2017, Tohani Winery hosted its first “harvest celebration” event, in the form of an outdoors evening party, held right at the heart of their vineyard and dedicated to fine wine, jazz music and dazzling “vineyard-at-sunset” views.
A few words about Tohani Winery…
Tohani Winery (in Romanian: “Domeniile Tohani”) is located in Tohani village, Gura Vadului commune, Prahova county, in the Dealu Mare vineyard, about 85 kilometers north of Bucharest. The fastest way to reach Tohani Winery is by car, taking the A3 Bucharest-Ploiesti highway, to be exited at Gherghita, and then driving further to Mizil and Gura Vadului. Any GPS app will take you right to Tohani Winery’s doorstep and the entire drive should take approximately 1 hour and a half, but it ultimately depends on Bucharest traffic, which is notoriously bad.
Dealu Mare vineyard is one of Romania’s most renowned vineyards, being the largest vineyard in the most important wine-growing area of the country, the hills of Muntenia and Oltenia. Dealu Mare vineyard enjoys a mild, warm climate, with average drought and cold nights, which it shares with other famous vineyards in Europe, such as Montélimar in France, Anadia in Portugal and Rioja in Spain[1]. It is also worth noting that Dealu Mare vineyard is located on the same parallel as Tuscany and Bordeaux wine regions, giving it all the favourable premises to create exquisite reds. Indeed, the vineyard has been recognized as “the most interesting wine region in Romania in terms of ambitious red wines”[2], with grape varieties such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Pinot Noir, Syrah and Feteasca Neagra feeling right at home here.
Tohani Winery is the largest winery in Dealu Mare vineyard, currently comprising approximately 460 ha of vineyards, down from a staggering 800 ha, in a bold move to downscale yield in favour of refining winemaking. It is particularly this desire to target a more “wine-educated” (and, truth be told, also a more prosperous, middle-class) consumer, that has fueled the re-shaping of the Tohani Winery wines and brand during the last 10 years, under the watchful eye of New-World winemaker, Mr Albertus van der Merwe and Dr. Ion Marin, the resident winemaker of Tohani Winery for the past 30 years. It is from this interesting mix of know-how, experience and different approaches to winemaking that the winery’s flagship wine, Apogeum Feteasca Neagra, was born, paving the way for Tohani Winery to enter a whole different league of wineries.
Sandra with Mr Albertus van der Merwe and Dr. Ion Marin, winemakers with Tohani Winery
How was the MAUVE – Tohani Wine Experience?
It is important to pinpoint from the start that MAUVE – Tohani Wine Experience was conceived as an event open to the public, based on prior registration, and its organizers really put an effort into making sure wine enthusiasts heard about it and reached it in due time, raising awareness on social media and making available buses for free transportation of pre-registered guests to and from Bucharest. Still, quite a lot of attendees chose to drive there, ourselves included, and generous parking space was available on-site.
The event was attended by what seemed like that more than 200 guests, although being a Friday evening event in a location that ultimately implied a 3-hour round trip, proving once again that we wine enthusiasts are resilient when it comes to fine wine.
The hosts made available wines from their Cuvée range for tasting, out of which Cuvée Dolette, a dry rosé sparkling wine, made of varieties of Busuioaca, Pinot Noir and Syrah, was my wine of choice for the evening. The sparkling cuvee has a pleasant rose and extremely feminine aroma to it, nicely accompanied by a tonic taste, with fruity and rose sweet-jam notes – pretty much a trip down memory lane to a time when rose sweet-jam was a prized delicacy to be taken out as a dessert for Sunday meals.
During the event, I had the chance to meet and briefly chat with Tohani Winery’s winemaker, Albertus van der Merwe, who kindly shared his views on the approach the winery now takes to winemaking. Being born, raised and educated in South Africa, Mr van der Merwe is undoubtedly a New-World winemaker and, for the last 10 years, his tenure as winemaker at Tohani Winery translated into implementing the New World winemaking style, out of which he particularly pointed to fermentation occurring at much lower temperatures.
Mr Albertus van der Merwe talking about his 10 year tenure at Tohani Winery
Mr van der Merwe also mentioned the upcoming launch of a new wine part of Tohani Winery’s range, “Siel”, which is the Afrikaans word for “Soul”. It appears that Siel will be a coupage, whose exact formula has yet to be defined, but which, by the looks of it, will bear Mr van der Merwe signature and which he was most certainly excited about. We would definitely love to head back to Tohani Winery once Siel is out into the world and hear more from Mr van der Merwe on his new creation.
Mr Albertus van der Merwe talking about his 10 year tenure at Tohani Winery
Going forward, the evening was accompanied by jazz music for its almost surreal sunset part, but culminated with dancing and a camp fire later on, when the background of fine wine tasting definitely paved the way for socializing amongst wine enthusiasts.
In a nutshell…
MAUVE – Tohani Wine Experience was definitely a well-planed, successful event for wine enthusiasts and set a high bar for the “open-day” harvesting events season which is underway. While the event was an outdoors evening party and did not involve visiting the winery or the cellars thereof, it definitely raised awareness on where Tohani Winery wishes to place itself nowadays and created the premises for a future wine wandering tour and tasting at the winery, also putting Apogeum Feteasca Neagra on our list of future must-buys.
[1] Prof. Dr. Arina Oana Antoce, Introductory Notions in Viticulture – Faculty course notes;
[2] Hugh Johnson, Jancis Robinson, The world atlas of wine, 2013 Edition.