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The objective of Royal Romanian is to introduce visitors to Romanian wines that stand toe to toe with those from renowned wine regions such as Napa Valley, California, and Bordeaux, France.
Our aim is to familiarize you with grape varietals native to Romania, their rich history, and their place in the modern-day wine industry.
Additionally, we will guide you through travel and culinary adventures in Romania, experiences that go hand in hand for wine lovers, especially when it comes to wine pairings with food.
My first trip to Romania with my wife was over 10 years ago, before we were married. I was amazed at how welcoming everyone was and how at home they made me feel, along with the bounty of food and drink I was always offered when visiting someone’s home.
At our wedding in Romania two years after my first visit, I witnessed the same red-carpet treatment rolled out for my American family and friends who came to Romania to attend our wedding.
I thought to myself, Romanians make all guests feel like royalty. This thought led me to buy the domain RoyalRomanian.com.
Working in sales in Silicon Valley didn’t give me much free time to decide how to bring RoyalRomanian.com to life.
My wife and I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for 10 years after we were married. There are so many great day trips and weekend trips to take from the Bay Area, including to Napa Valley, where we visited several times a year and explored numerous wineries over the years.
Working in semiconductor sales and entertaining customers at nice dinners in Silicon Valley, I had the luxury of drinking some of the finest wines from Napa Valley, mainly big bold Cabernet Sauvignons that had been aged for many years and were silky smooth.
We also have several friends who are wine connoisseurs, and through them, we tasted some of the finest bottles of wine, red and white, that Napa Valley has to offer.
In 2020, when the pandemic hit, we began to explore wines beyond Napa Valley and beyond Cabs as we found very good wines in our own backyard, the Santa Cruz Mountains.
We found visiting these wineries in the Santa Cruz Mountains or the wineries located a couple of hours south in Paso Robles to be a much more enjoyable experience than what Napa wineries had become—overcrowded.
We still love Napa and are thankful we have friends there who are members of some of the best wineries, but we now love Napa more for culinary experiences. I still get my big bold aged Cab fix when we go there, and my wife gets to taste the best buttery Chardonnays.
When we started exploring wineries outside of Napa Valley, we also started to find other varietals that we really enjoyed at much better price points. I remember the first time I went to Loma Prieta Winery for a tasting and discovered a Cabernet Franc that I absolutely loved.
From that day at Loma Prieta on, we continued to explore wineries in the Santa Cruz Mountains and continued to find bottles that we really enjoyed.
Actually, the experience I just described is a good description of Romanian wines that the Director of Sales at Licorna Winehouse in Dealu Mare, Romania told his audience at my first tasting there. He said, “Romania has some really good bottles of wine; you just need to find them.”
Since I’ve become an enthusiast of Romanian wines, this website is here to help you do just that—find good bottles of Romanian wines like the ones I found in the Santa Cruz Mountains and like the bottles I’m enjoying now in Romania.
Come to Romania to see Old Town Bucharest, Bran Castle, Peles Castle in Sinaia, Sibiu, Sighisoara, and the bears of the Transfagarasan, but stop along the way to visit its amazing wineries.
Be treated like royalty at Romanian wineries and discover a really good bottle of wine or two along the way. My enthusiasm for good wine in Napa Valley and my enthusiasm for good wine beyond Napa Valley is why I decided to focus RoyalRomanian.com on Romanian Wineries and our experiences visiting them and I think you’ll understand more as you journey along with my wife and I in the Royal Romanian blog.
I’ve begun the journey in the Dealu Mare wine region which is known as the best wine region in Romania for red wines and this region features great white wines too.
Over time, we will venture well beyond Dealu Mare. Come along and enjoy!