Italian Casa Antinori launches its first winery in Romania, a EUR 2.85 mln investment

Romanian premium wine producer Vitis Metamorfosis, which is controlled by the Italian Antinori family, has officially inaugurated its first own winery in Vadu Sapat village in Prahova. The company has been producing its own wines in Romania since 2008, in cooperation with local wineries. The investment in the new winery, which is located in the Dealu Mare wine region, one of the most famous in Romania, was of EUR 2.85 million. Some EUR 350,000 were the initial acquisition costs, while the renovation and the refurbishment of the winery required EUR 2.5 million investments. The project was financed partly by the shareholders and partly through non-refundable EU funds. The winery in Vadu Sapat can produce about 1.5 million bottles of wine each year and its deposit facilities can hold up to 11,500 hectoliters of wine. “We want to open the winery for torus and wine tastings, but we also want to launch new wines and to develop our distribution and export activities,” said Giancorrado Ulrich, president of Vitis Metamorfosis. The company also launched new wines under the brand Coltul Pietrei, which come from the 2013 harvest and will start to be distributed exclusively in HoReCa and specialized shops this autumn. Vitis Metamorfosis was established in 2008 and has a total of 100 hectares of vineyards in the Dealu Mare region. It has 11 wines in its portfolio, which were made by Italian winemaker Fiorenzo Rista. The company is owned by the Antinory noble family, which also owns wineries in the Italian provinces of Tuscany and Umbria. Casa Antinori has been producing wines in Italy for over 600 years. Andrei Chirileasa, andrei@romania-insider.com