Grasă de Cotnari
Romania · White · Limited (B)
The great sweet-wine grape, confined to the Cotnari vineyard in Moldova. The traditional account has Stephen the Great of Moldavia receiving vine material as a gift from Matthias Corvinus of Hungary — supposedly Furmint, in fact a low-fertility variety — and planting it on the sunny hills of Cotnari, where it thrived. The main styles are sweet and off-dry, made by late harvesting and deliberate botrytis, producing lower-alcohol wines of exceptional body, flavour and acidity, showing raisin, honey and apricot with bottle age. Dry versions exist but are not the point.