" 1 " Le Vin de Nos Amis

Has it ever happened to you that when you are passionate about something when you do something with all your heart, you want to make others share in your joy?

This happens to me frequently. Now that I think about it, it's like I want to convert others to become passionate about what I like.

So it was with wine. I first had the idea of ​​making a wine with friends around 2013, but it's not exactly easy to leave people who are not familiar with the process of harvesting and processing grapes in the winery, in the middle of the harvest season, when the winery has to be in a perfectly clean state, the team I was working with at the time rejected my idea.

But in 2019 during a discussion with Laurent Pfeffer, the owner and oenologist of the Catleya winery, we realized that we would both enjoy making wine with friends, and so the wine I imagined ended up being called Le Vin de Nos Amis.

Now three years later, after returning each year and making our own wine, I can tell you that there are two sides to a successful event and an exceptional wine, one relaxing for the participants and one stressful for a winemaker who has to make sure everything is clean and tidy after a day's work in the winery.

But let me tell you how everything went in the first year.

We rented a minibus with which we were going to leave Cluj and arrive at Corcova, at Catleya. We took it the day before so that at 9 in the morning we would meet everyone, get into the minibus and leave. We loaded the car in the morning, it was full and we all got in, ready to go. Only the minibus refused to start. So we got down, circled him, gave our opinion, and found that there was nothing we could do about it. I called the rental company, they didn't have another car and they didn't seem to be surprised that the minibus wouldn't start, but the interesting part was that they didn't have a solution for us either.

Relu came up with the brilliant idea to get another minibus from a friend who had a rental company. All said and done, Relu and Mihai set off for Baciu, took a new minibus, and.... surprise, on the way to us, the minibus started to slow down and crawl at a speed of 20 km/h. They entered the first gas station, they call the owner, and ... they took a third minibus, with the hope that it will take us to Corcova.

We loaded the car again, we all got in, and finally, we started, only 3 hours late and a lot of thoughts and the hope that this minibus won't break down again. The best part was that we laughed non-stop on the road to Corcova, laughing at the trouble and imagining all sorts of scenarios we would end up in by the time we got home.

In the evening we stayed in Drobeta Turnu Severin where we enjoyed a gourmet dinner presented by Laurent, an extremely successful pairing between the dishes and Freamat wines from Catleya.

In the morning we went to work and arrived at the vineyard, Laurent instructed us and we started to harvest Fetească Neagră. We had to harvest enough BFetească Neagră to fill a 400L barrel. It was a perfect day for harvesting, we finished by noon and were rewarded with a picnic next to the vineyard on the newly laid out platform for Laurent's house extension. The bread mane "pâine la țest" was the treat of the day, I don't know if you've ever had it, but if you're in the area, ask who has it and don't miss the opportunity to taste it, actually eat it, because once you taste it, you can't stop until finish it, ... please, that's what happens to me :).

With the grapes harvested, we went down to the winery and our friends found out with amazement what the next step was. We were going to de-stem, berry by berry, all the grapes for the 400 l barrel. In this whole process, we had to be careful not to sneak into the barrel, grapes that are not conforming, that are not ripe enough, or that have traces of diseases and pests. In the end, we had a barrel full of perfect berries, the end came after many hours of work, helped by Freamăt Rose and infectious joy. I don't think I've laughed so much in one day in my life. The total surprise was that Laurent and Anne-Cecile's girls, who came to help us, had a much better speed and dexterity than ours To our shame if the ladies from the winery didn't help us, I don't think we would have finished filling the barrel, but somehow by nightfall, we had finished.

The dinner from the vineyard, the Epic wines, and the bonfires, all contributed to an absolutely gorgeous evening. For me, the main treat was the first tasting of the Perfect Simplu wines, which were neither bottled nor launched on the market yet. I think that's one of the advantages of going to a winery, getting the first taste of something that's about to be released. We sat telling stories around the fire until cold and tiredness sent us to bed.

For us, it was fun, with work, laughter, and wines, for Laurent it was more complicated to manage everything in the winery to make sure at the end of the day that everything is put in order and to clean the whole winery, and then two years to follow carefully and precisely so that our wine comes out as close to perfection as possible.

We left for home the next day and Laurent, for two long years, kept us informed on the Facebook group about the operations our wine underwent and the stages of fermentation and maturation. We tasted our wine, Feteasca Neagră, 4 times in two years, and we all decided how long to leave it in the barrel. The pandemic messed up our plans, but we still got to taste it at his house in 2020, so we decided to bottle it and launch it in 2021, with the third event.

This year, on September 25, we launched Le Vin de Nos Amis "1", along with the third edition of the event. It was great that we could bottle ourselves, label, sign our own labels and seal the bottles with wax.

The story of our label is simple, but it captures the essence of what Le Vin de Nos Amis is. It's the first edition, that's why the number 1 appears to cut out on the label, it's surrounded by a fingerprint because each of us put our fingerprint on the wine, and the fingerprint is made up of the word friend written in all languages, even if we didn't all know each other, we ended up being friends at Catleya. Finally, the description of our wine is simple: Wine obtained from grapes harvested, de-stemmed, and hand-selected, uncrushed, left to ferment in 400 l oak barrels with natural yeasts. Aged in oak barrels for 24 months. Made with passion by a group of friends, perfected by Laurent Pfeffer. A batch of 530 bottles, some "sacrificed" and bottled in magnum bottles.

Le Vin de Nos Amis "1", is a dark violet-red wine, with a complex nose of black cherries, with spicy notes of black pepper and plum magiun, with fine notes of smoke and tobacco that do not cover the fruit flavors. It has a pleasant acidity reminiscent of ripe cherry jam, a full, well-structured, unctuous body with a pleasant astringency, with well-expressed and integrated tannins, the aromas of dried plums intertwine with those of dark chocolate. A sophisticated, complex wine, with an aging capacity of over 15 years, but which, opened now, will give you an extraordinary experience.

In case you want to purchase "1" Le Vin de Nos Amis, its price is 225 lei 0.75l and 455 lei 1.5l. All you have to do is send us an email at office@artvinium.ro with your order. We only have a limited number of bottles left, because we each bought all the others and put them in our own collection.