Are these the World's Cheapest Natural Wines?

New bargain priced releases from Romanian giant Cramele Recaș

Philip Cox and I have history. We’ve sparred over the years on the importance and definition of natural wine, sustainability and more. Generally though, we end up in violent agreement, even if at first glance we sit at opposite ends of the wine spectrum.

Philip is co-owner and export director of Romania’s most successful winery, Cramele Recaș, which produces in excess of 20 million litres of wine per year. They’re also famous for getting an orange wine on the shelf in the UK for just £6.

Cramele Recaș might be resolutely mainstream and commercial - you can’t run an operation that size any other way - but Philip remains ever curious. It was that curiosity that prompted him to produce a ‘natural’ orange wine in 2018. It went on sale for £5.99 in the UK’s Aldi supermarkets, causing quite a stir. The column inches probably outweighed the sales, simply because the winery only made an experimental quantity.

But it was successful enough that Cox decided to continue. Now, seven years later, Recaș makes around 75,000 bottles of that same orange, and keeps adding labels to their natural line. It’s become a significant niche for the winery.

Philip recently sent me their latest natural wines to try. Anticipating scepticism from my readers, I asked myself two questions: “Do these fit any recognised definition of natural wines?” and “do they taste like natural wines?”