The title was awarded to Ion Borta, chief winemaker at the Cricova winery. During the official opening of National Wine Day, he was also presented with the commemorative Petru Ungureanu Medal.
Ion Borta has worked in winemaking for 20 years, almost all of that time at Cricova winery, where he joined the company after completing a master’s degree taught in French. He says he was attracted by the opportunity to work honestly, with quality as the priority.
I began as a red-wine technologist in the cellar where the wines were aged,” says Ion Borta. “For nine years, during the harvest season, I also spent three to four months at the primary winemaking facility in Cahul. Those wines were then sent to Cricova. I witnessed the winery’s reconstruction and expansion. At that time, the white and rosé wines were separated from the reds and moved from the cellar upstairs, where many new tanks had been installed. The red wines remained in the cellar. Previously, all the ageing took place there, while upstairs the wines were only prepared for bottling and the subsequent stages. From 2013, I spent three years working in sparkling-wine production. Then, in 2016, when Vasile Luca left the company to take up a position in public service, I was appointed chief winemaker. I have held this position for almost nine years.”
Asked what he finds interesting about the profession of winemaking, Borta replied that it offers the opportunity to search for something new in the field. He is drawn to creating new products. This interest laid the foundation for a fruitful collaboration with the renowned inventor Ivan Andreevich Prida, who developed the theoretical aspects, while Ion Borta was responsible for putting the ideas into production.
One of their first joint projects was “Vin Virgin”, a dry wine made from Merlot grapes in which technological intervention was reduced almost to zero in order to reveal the grapes’ richness as fully as possible. In addition to its organoleptic qualities, this wine has concentrations of extract 1.4 times higher, phenolic compounds 1.5 times higher, colouring substances 2.22 times higher, and resveratrol 2.26 times higher than those found in conventional wines. It has antioxidant and free-radical-scavenging properties.
Ion began making this wine at the primary winemaking facility in Cahul. To increase its extract content, part of the must was drawn off, while the remaining portion spent 30 days on the skins. The wine underwent no treatments; it was only aged in barrels.
Experiments with Ion Prida on red wines led to the registration of several inventions for which Prida and Borta were named as co-inventors.
When I became chief winemaker, the range of possibilities widened,” Borta continues. “We began producing a classic brut nature sparkling wine. That is how our Elogiu brut natur came about. Last year, I had the idea of trying to make a sparkling orange wine. The experiment was successful, and Cricova’s Amber Cuvée-Orange is now on the market. In the still-wine category, we decided to rethink our approach to blended wines. For many years, we offered only the classic Codru (Cabernet Sauvignon–Merlot) and Dionis (Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon). They remain in our range, but a new series, ‘1952’, was launched in 2025.”
As chief winemaker, Ion Borta is responsible for eight divisions of the company. He also heads the team responsible for food safety and the implementation of ISO 9000 and ISO 22000 standards. In addition, he has taken on the Wild organic-wine production project, which required the implementation of EU Regulation 2018/848 on organic production and the labelling of organic products.
This work has resulted in the production of not only organic still wines but also the organic sparkling wine Viorica. It is worth noting that producing these wines to a high standard is not easy, given the restrictions on the use of sulphur and processing aids during the season. Every product used must be accompanied by a certificate from its manufacturer confirming that it is permitted in organic production. A German certification company then checks everything so that Cricova’s organic wines can receive European certification.
