For Easter, Open a Romanian Wine
Today and tomorrow, if we are to follow traditions, the shops and markets will be overcrowded again. With the shopping list carefully written down on a note, we will all try not to forget one or another of the ingredients needed for the Easter meal. For each one, after their taste, more greens, more mayonnaise, more crispy from the oven or juicier from the grill…
But the one thing that can not be absent from any dinner – the wine. And, because the choice of wine seems to have become increasingly difficult in recent years, we have a reliable friend where we know for sure that we will find the right bottle: the Deschidem Vinul Romanesc (DVR – We Open The Romanian Wine) program, initiated almost four years ago by Carrefour Romania.
Dozens of wineries, hundreds of labels, but also people ready to help you navigate through tastes and flavours. Not those people who turn wines into foreign and complicated languages, but normal people, who cook the same things at home as we do. There are dozens of award-winning labels, some of them created exclusively for this program. There are labels that you will find in any hypermarket in the country, but there are also labels from small wineries, which exist only in that region, preserving the taste of the place (often they are also the most suitable for local food).
DVR started as a national initiative, aimed at supporting wine producers from all over the country, whose number had grown from a few dozen at the beginning of the 2000s to over 500 today. To be present on the shelves means, for many of them, and especially for the small producers, a sense of security about tomorrow, capital to be able to work the vineyard and to ready the wines of the following year.
Then 2020 came, and the pandemic and restrictions put additional pressure on producers, who saw themselves deprived of a market that represented between half and 90% of sales – the restaurants. DVR proved to be one of the most important initiatives in this context, but, moreover, it made apparent the importance of such a program for regular customers, those who represent, in fact, the most important audience – those who consume their wine at home .
Online wine trade was, until the pandemic, extremely specialized, with the emphasis on wines designed for the HoReCa market. The most important players were either importers or HoReCa distribution companies. For all those who started ordering their purchases through delivery companies, it became obvious that the DVR wine offer was not only the most complete offer in retail, in terms of diversity, but also the most balanced in terms of quality / price ratio.
An important aspect must be mentioned here – all the wines listed in the program Deschidem Vinul Romanesc arrive on the shelf only after they are evaluated by a committee of experts and meet a certain quality standard (minimum 82 points, in accordance with the standard score of the International Organization of Vine and Wine, OIV).
Now in its fourth year, DVR is the most complete and active promotion program for Romanian wine, and new wineries join it every year – SERVE has just created two wines exclusively for Carrefour shelves – the red and the white versions of Secret / Vinul Cavalerului. Not only in the country, but also in the world. Through this program, Romanian wines reached the screens in Times Square on Romania’s National Day, went to Milan or Rome, in wine festivals, or to other corners of the world. And yet, Deschidem Vinul Romanesc is more than that.
Marinela Ardelean, consultant and ambassador of the DVR program, explains: "It is a program about wine, but also a program about people. And, more than that, it is a model and a source of inspiration. Deschidem Vinul Romanesc is the perfect example of what relationships between people mean, in all these years, a community has taken shape with the common goal to support the Romanian wine, as well as a true bond with owners of wineries, with oenologists, with the sales teams. It’s a feeling that goes beyond the idea of partnership, it’s closer to an alliance, a coalition, we might even call it friendship.
We all want the same thing, to put the Romanian wine in its rightful place, both at home and in the world. It is a successful recipe that can be used as a model. A similar initiative may come to support other Romanian high quality products, such as cheese, honey or traditional foods… And it is an inspiration through dynamism, quality and the constant effort to help, to be present, to contribute to the development of a national symbol which, well managed, could even become a national brand – the Romanian wine".
So, dear wine lovers, if you haven’t yet decided upon the wine for the Easter dinner, confidently choose the DVR wines, available both in Carrefour hypermarkets or online, on Carrefour.ro. Let’s open together a Romanian wine!
