Domestic wine industry players are increasingly resorting to foreign winemakers even though their salaries are several thousand euros bigger than those of a Romanian winemaker.
European market competition or the decision to change something in the portfolio structure are pushing wine producers to take out several thousand euros from their pockets every month in order to secure a winemaker who was had training abroad. "At first, foreign investors operating on the domestic market decided to bring foreign specialists, but there's a rising number of domestic producers bringing foreign winemakers. This is a natural development. I believe, though, that soon we will also bring Romanian winemakers who went abroad and managed to make a name for themselves on the markets of the New World," considers Catalin Paduraru, a shareholder of Vinexpert, the biggest wine retailer on the domestic market.
A winemaker from Australia or New Zeeland that comes to stay in Romania for two months gets around 5,000 euros per month beside accommodation, according to industry officials. The monthly salary of a winemaker who signed a longer-term contract is lower, though. On the other hand, an experienced Romanian oenologist working in a big wine cellar does not earn more than 1,500 euros per month, according to the same sources. Foreign winemakers who left their mark on domestic wines include Jurgen Hofmann, a winemaker with Carl Reh Winery, Fiorenzo Rista from Vinarte, or Australian-born Stephen Bennet, a former winemaker with Murfatlar, currently part of the team of experts of Cramele Halewood. Some of them have ended their terms on the domestic market, while others have only changed producers, like Stephen Bennet did. Producers such as Halewood, Cramele Recas or Carl Reh Winery, all with foreign shareholders, usually bring winemakers from abroad to handle their vineyards.
