EROTIKON, our first Art-and-Wine limited edition achieved in cooperation with visual artist Ciprian Paleologu, included a series of innovations.
First, in order to promote the concept of “maturation at home”, the wines in this collection were launched still “green”, but with a great preservation potential. Those who did not hurry, who understood that a wine “lives” its ages in turn, began to discover and realize that time leaves traces on its evolution. Launched at the beginning of autumn 2008 out of the wines of an exceptional year (2007), these varieties neared the maturation threshold only at the beginning of 2010 and acquired maximum expression after 2011.
Second, the collection represented the moment when an encounter did change for good and all the “face” of the Oprişor wines – that between Veronica Gheorghiu, the wine maker who extracted the maximum expression from each grape and every oak barrel, and oenologist Liviu Grigorică, the alchemist who discovered the perfect ratios among wine blends. We owe the liquors of the Art-and-Wine collections to both of them. It was also the first encounter between Oprişor and Ciprian Paleologu in a project able to give the artist full freedom of expression. Certainly, the result enflamed both the “purists” and the “progressivists”, and the achieved labels were classified as either an expression of “erotic art” or of “pornography”. Yet they spoke too little about the fact that EROTIKON was (and still is, taking into account the small number of bottles left in the thesaurus) the first collection that did update a classic theme: the relationship among wine, art and eroticism. From the nostalgia after the maternal bosom, through the brutal sex, purely physical, and, circularly, to the birth miracle and self redefinition within the family milieu, the labels in the EROTIKON collection express, in strong touches, the moments hallmarking our life, whether we refer to Freudian stages (oral, anal, phallic, latent, genital) or to literary “steps” (arduous love, carnal love, mature passion and wise man’s all-embracing view).

Out of the 6700 glass bottles in the EROTIKON collection, 600 pieces were numbered, signed and packed in 200 wooden boxes.