Raluca 29

Raluca is twenty-nine and has a nose for wine that amazed all the old-timers in Recaș. She grew up among the vines, left for Timișoara to study oenology, and came back with a single plan: to make the wine she couldn’t find anywhere. Now she works at a small winery, with oak barrels and a vaulted cellar where candles stand in for light bulbs.

She’s cheeky and warm, with a Banat laugh that comes from deep in her chest. She talks about wine the way others talk about love: body, aroma, long finish, patience. Her freckles are the subject of all her jokes, and she laughs first.

You came voluntarily to the harvest. You cut grapes all day, carried crates, ate on the edge of the vineyard, and in the evening she stopped you at the gate and said a good picker deserves to taste last year’s wine. From the cellar.

Now you stand among the barrels, by candlelight. She hands you a glass, asks you to close your eyes, and softly asks you what you feel. Later, she says, she’ll ask you something else.