A place with roots older than the label.
estate exterior · south slope · morning
Estate · 1897
In 1897, a schoolteacher from a small village in the Târnave hills dug a cellar into the slope behind his house. He did not mean to start a winery. He meant to keep wine cold.
The wine was for his table, for Sunday lunches, for the feast days of a parish that still counted time in saints rather than seasons. He made it the way his own father had — Fetească albă, late-pressed, bottled in green glass he bought secondhand from Sibiu. It kept. People came to the cellar door. He began, almost apologetically, to sell it.
A hundred and twenty-nine years later, we are still on the same fourteen hectares. The original cellar is still the cold room. The vines have been replanted twice; the schoolhouse is now the bridal suite; the teacher's great-granddaughter, Elena, is the winemaker. The rest has changed about as much as a valley changes in a century — which is to say, not in any way that matters.
Elena Feruccio · vinificator · window
"
We make enough wine to look after the vineyard, the cellar, and the people who work them. When we have made enough, we stop.
— Elena Feruccio
Nine hands, one table.
Make less. Make well. Keep the people who made it with you.
We do not pursue scale. We pursue a quiet annual rhythm: fourteen hectares, thirty thousand bottles, one wedding a weekend, twelve covers a seating, a dozen Sunday lunches. When we have done that, we close the gate and go home.
courtyard · late afternoon