Philip Cox was 29 when he hatched an unlikely scheme: to buy a state-owned vineyard on the western fringes of Romania.
Family and friends thought he was mad. “The factory was old-fashioned, rusty and run-down,” he says. “There were no bottling facilities at all. It had been used to sell bulk wine and grapes and was totally unloved.”
He struck a deal with the Romanian government, purchasing the winery in 1998 and the vineyard a year later.
“We had no money, so we bought a land lease agreement on the condition we paid for the land over five years”, Cox says. “It was a big farm – 660 hectares – and the grapes were good. I saw lots of potential in the place.”
Armed with youthful enthusiasm but no formal wine qualifications, he set about creating a global wine brand – and ended up forging the biggest winery in Eastern Europe.
‘It was like the Wild West’
Bristol-born Cox’s love affair with Romania began in his early twenties, when the country was still reeling from the fall of Communism.
“After finishing university in 1990, I got a job working in advertising,” he explains. “It was a horrible job and I hated it, but they sent me all over Eastern Europe.”
His grand tour of the Eastern Bloc began the year after Romanian leader, Nicolae Ceaușescu, had been brutally executed on Christmas Day. When he reached Romania, he found the new government busily unwinding the country’s Communist structure.
“It was like the Wild West. There was no private business at all back then,” recalls Cox. “No import or export. Everything had collapsed; there was famine, no electricity, hyperinflation.”
Cox found many kindred spirits in Romania. The people were “entrepreneurial” and “aspired to a Western lifestyle”.
“Under the Communist state, Romania had been completely cut off,” he says. “No one was allowed to leave or talk to foreigners. But everyone I met said, ‘let’s start a business’.”
He felt he had nothing to lose: “I was young, skint, and full of ideas.”
He attempted several enterprises with some success, becoming the first importer to sell Heineken beer in Romania.
“It was seen as an aspirational drink, like champagne,” he says. He also opened a cinema, screening Hollywood movies “that got shut down by the police”.
The volatility of the Romanian economy created opportunities – and challenges. “We couldn’t change the leu into hard currency,” Cox says. “The only way to do that was to export something, which we could buy in the local currency.”
‘My relatives thought I was mad’
This is how Cox first got into the wine business.
“Local people were making wine and they weren’t selling any abroad,” he says. “So I bought lots of samples and attended wine fairs all over the UK.” Being English proved an asset in those days. “I understood capitalism and the language of business”, Cox says.
Romanian wine was completely unheard of then. “People just laughed at me,” says Cox, ruefully.
By chance, he bumped into an executive from Germany’s Reh Kendermann, makers of Black Tower wine. The company was keen to gain a foothold in the nascent Eastern European wine market. Cox brought them to Romania and introduced them to some of the families who were growing grapes in the region.
“Aged 23, they made me a managing director,” Cox says. “I spent seven years selling wine from Romania all over the world for them. But then we had a difference of opinion. I wanted to move into the grape-growing side of the winemaking industry as there were loads of wineries and vineyards going up for sale. So, we parted ways.”
Cox joined forces with two partners, local viticulturists George Iova and John Georgiu, and together they bought a winery and vineyard near Timisoara, establishing the brand Cramele Recas. The trio needed money to pay for the land and buy equipment and labour, so they turned to family and friends, raising £2m.
“My relatives thought I was mad,” says Cox. “It was very difficult to convince people to back me. My father believed in me. He was entrepreneurial and ran a chain of supermarkets in Bristol. He didn’t have much money but he gave what he could.”
‘We lived on next to nothing for 10 years’
The early years were a struggle.
“We weren’t making money but we had to pay wages and buy grapes,” says Cox. “Winemaking is a really cash-intensive business. You have to buy bottles, corks and grow the grapes, but you won’t make anything from the wine for a year and a half.”
Cox received a lot of support from his wife’s family. He married Bucharest-born Elvira in 1995 – she is export director at the business – and the pair lived with her father when money was tight.
The first wines produced by Cramele Recas were “decent”, Cox says, but “nowhere near as good as they are now”. Cox would attend trade fairs in London, Dusseldorf and Hong Kong and chase after buyers, pitching endlessly.
“If we didn’t sell, we didn’t eat. I won our second biggest customer by camping out next to their stand at a wine fair in Germany and refusing to leave until they bought something.”
The winemakers focused on creating easily recognisable wines like Chardonnay and Pinot Grigio to get a foot in the door. Today, however, they specialise in crafting wines from local Feteasca grapes, selling to the likes of Wetherspoons, M&S and Waitrose.
Romania is now the fifth-largest wine-producing country in Europe. According to Cox, it is an ideal place to grow grapes because of the altitude, weather and low wages: “You pay about 80pc what you would pay in the UK,” he estimates. “And the EU gives out grants to plant vines.”
The number of wineries in the region grew by 10pc during 2023, according to Romania’s National Office of Vine and Wine products, in response to local demand. Romanians still import almost four times more wine than they export.
Cramele Recas elbowed its way into the global wine industry by selling “good quality wines at moderate prices”, says Cox. The first-time winemaker has also been very savvy in his business decisions, producing an orange wine to coincide with the boom in demand for natural wines and even creating a wine bottle made from plastic recovered from the Danube.
“It helps that I’m not someone who has inherited a multi-generational family wine business, who refuses to adapt to the times and is competing with thousands of other similar chateaux,” he says. “I’m not sentimental. I am commercial and competitive.”
The business now employs 250 people and its winemaking team is led by highly regarded oenologists Nora Iriarte and Hartley Smithers.
“Over the years, we have put €50m back into this business,” says Cox. “For the first 10 years, we lived on next to nothing. Luckily, a little money goes much further here.”
Eastern Europe’s most profitable wine brand
In 2007, Romania joined the European Union, and this prompted a change in circumstances for Cox.
“That’s when we started feeling financially secure for the first time,” he says. “Before we joined the EU, we had no access to credit, so all our cash was always tied up in the business. That was the year we started paying ourselves a proper wage.”
The business has weathered many storms, from economic downturns to the war in Ukraine. Cox opened his home, near Timișoara, to 13 Ukrainians and watched as soaring energy prices doubled the cost of glass bottles.
There have been some bad harvests too, which have threatened to topple the business: “In winemaking, you live permanently on the edge of financial ruin,” he says.
He and his co-owners have tripled the size of the business since 2016, and now sell 32 million bottles of wine each year. The business turns over €70m (£58m) and margins stand at 25pc.
“Most wineries don’t make anything like that,” says Cox. “We’re lucky or clever or both.”
Cox, now 56, lives a simple life with his wife and two children. “We have a holiday house by the Black Sea. That feels like a luxury,” he says. “But we don’t go crazy. It’s been a real fight to make this business work, so we aren’t going to throw it all away on a bling lifestyle.”
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