📍 Panciu

Panciu is a wine zone around the town of the same name in Vrancea County, eastern Romania, protected in the EU as a designation of origin (PDO). The name covers still wines, quality sparkling wines and aromatic quality sparkling wines, each registered as a separate PDO. The zone also lies within the broader Dealurile Vrancei PGI.

The vineyards lie on the piedmont plain outside the curve of the Carpathians and the Vrancea Subcarpathians, sloping east towards the Siret valley. The soils formed mostly on loess-like loams over sands and gravels; chernozems and grey forest soils cover almost 90% of the area. The climate is temperate continental, typical of the forest steppe.

Mostly white grapes are grown: Fetească Albă, Fetească Regală, Italian Riesling, Galbenă de Odobești, Chardonnay, Aligoté and others; the reds include Merlot, Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon and Fetească Neagră. According to the specification, the white wines owe their extract, balanced structure and good acidity to the south-east-facing slopes, and the reds are known for finesse, light tannins and a bright colour. Sparkling Panciu must have at least 10.5% vol. and an overpressure of at least 3.5 bar, and it is bottled only within the delimited area.

Viticulture here is old: a fragment of a Carpic pot found at Pădureni is decorated with a vine with two bunches, and in the 16th century an envoy of Ferdinand of Habsburg described large vineyards in the area, then called the vineyard of Crucea. In 1859 the vineyards of today's Panciu area covered 2,870 ha, 14% of all vineyards of Moldavia. To the south, the Putna valley separates Panciu from the Odobești vineyard.