Some of Ramona Enache-Lorenz’s fondest childhood memories are of the moments spent in her grandfather’s vineyard in Romania, where she learned to care for vines and make wine. Surrounded by barrels and stories, she developed an early appreciation for craftsmanship and taste.
It comes as little surprise that she eventually found her path in the wine world, though not as a winemaker. In 2014, Ramona founded Pointer, a Berlin-based platform dedicated to unique wine experiences and thoughtful design. During this time, she envisioned her first creation: a signature wine glass designed for picnics. Brought to life through crowdfunding, Pointer Wine Glasses are now produced in limited quantities in Europe and sold globally.
Over the years, Ramona’s travels further deepened her curiosity about wine, shaping both her palate and perspective. In 2023, she earned her WSET Level 3 certification and began hosting tastings to share the richness of her home country’s wine culture.
Today, Ramona’s work centers on Romanian, Eastern, and Southeastern European wines, with a special focus on indigenous grape varieties and small producers. Her monthly wine bar pop-ups in Charlottenburg highlight the diversity and pairing potential of wines from the region. Beyond events and design, she provides wine consultancy for restaurants and hospitality projects, and as an independent importer, she introduces carefully selected bottles from small, characterful Romanian wineries to a broader audience.
It was the craft and care of her grandfather that first drew her to wine, and Ramona keeps that tradition alive through her role as a visionary in the industry. Through her events and partnerships across Europe, Ramona bridges cultures and people - ideally, always with a glass of Romanian wine in hand.
Interview by Lauren Johnson-Wünscher, Berlin-based wine and food writer / Images courtesy of Ramona Enache-Lorenz
What moment or experience led you to create Pointer Wine Glasses?
Back when I was studying architecture in Amsterdam, I was working as an intern at an architecture office, earning the great amount of 300 euros per month. Traveling, dining out, or enjoying wine at a bar were simply out of reach. My parents and grandparents would send me packages from Romania, often filled with my grandfather’s homemade wine.
I used to take his wine to the park, together with real wine glasses from home, because even then, I believed wine deserves proper glassware. I spilled plenty of wine into the grass and broke many glasses, until one early evening when it happened yet again. Standing there with shards in my hands, I asked myself: what if there was a wine glass you could simply pin into the ground, so this would never happen again?
The next day, I searched online to see if such a thing existed, and couldn’t find anything. It was June 2014. That very day, by pure coincidence, I came across a competition where you could win a car simply by writing a letter about what you would do with it. So I wrote about my idea: a wine glass for the beach and for picnics, and how I would drive from my adopted home, the Netherlands, to my native Romania, visiting all the beaches of Europe along the way to promote my design.
Two days later, they called to tell me I had won. They couldn’t wait to meet me, or to see this revolutionary glass in person. The ceremony was in three days. So I rushed to the nearest bricolage store, bought what I could, and made the very first Pointer prototype by hand.
As silly as it started, that idea became my full-time business.
Do you have a background in design?
I studied architecture for a total of nine years in Bucharest, Ljubljana, and Eindhoven, including two years of professional work in architecture offices in Amsterdam. After creating Pointer, I left architecture and pursued a short career in fashion design. For four years, I worked in Berlin across a range of settings: from small ateliers to major brands such as Liebeskind Berlin where I was part of the accessories department as a product designer and manager. My last design role ended in 2020, along with the pandemic. It was one of the most interesting and formative experiences of my design career, involving frequent travels to Pakistan, where the production factories were based.
Do you find inspiration easy or challenging to come by?
I’m naturally creative and always ready for a new adventure. At times, it can be a challenge to keep up physically with all the ideas I have, and I’ve learned to accept that some things take longer to develop than others. I find inspiration in almost everything I do, and I try to focus on projects that spark positive energy. Whether it’s on-site research, visiting restaurants, bars, and cafes during my travels, or diving into books, I’m constantly looking for fresh perspectives. I also draw inspiration from art, architecture, and the reinterpretation of old objects or accessories that have been forgotten, always searching for ways to give them new life. Like many creative people, however, I’m easily put off by the less glamorous side of entrepreneurship: taxes, contracts, and all the complications that come with managing a small business on my own.
As a woman building a brand in what can still feel like a male-dominated industry, what challenges have you encountered - and what have been the most rewarding breakthroughs?
This is always a challenging question. I think I don’t speak for myself alone, there have been times when I was not judged fairly, or my knowledge wasn’t fully trusted, sometimes because I was a woman, sometimes because I was young. That said, I don’t want to generalize. In this male-dominated industry, I’ve also been fortunate to meet incredible male colleagues who supported me, treated me as an equal, and encouraged me to grow and push forward. On top of that, in our field, women really tend to stick together, and I feel lucky to be surrounded by such an amazing community of wine women. That’s something I hadn’t necessarily experienced before, neither in fashion nor in architecture.
How does your cultural background and travels influence your design taste and approach to wine?
For many years, I felt that my Eastern European background was more of a door closer than an opener in my Western European life. But over time, and especially since I started working with wine, that has completely changed. My roots have sparked countless meaningful conversations, and I’ve been genuinely happy to see how curious people are to discover the wine world of Eastern Europe, a region still relatively unknown to many. For decades, most people here only drank wines from the big, established producers of Western Europe, while Eastern Europe remained off the map, its winemaking history overshadowed by the collective, volume-driven production of the Soviet era. The remarkable shift that began in Romania some 15 to 20 years ago is only now beginning to resonate internationally, and I feel incredibly proud and grateful to be part of this exciting new chapter for Romanian and Eastern European wine.
Most of my travels, I’d say around 90%, revolve around wine. When I go on holiday, I make sure to visit wine regions or wine-focused countries, with the occasional exception of Asia. I’m constantly inspired by winemakers, the architecture of their cellars, and the other products they create alongside wine. Many boutique wineries have side ventures, whether it’s cheese, grains, or other local goods, and I love seeing how these worlds intersect. Experiencing local food and products firsthand is deeply inspiring and feeds into my own work, inspiring the events and dinners I create. Wine is very much a people’s business, not just a bottle business, and having conversations with the people behind each label allows me to become part of their story as I share it with others.
Designing glassware often raises questions about sustainability. How do you approach responsible production and timeless design in a market often driven by trends?
The project began quite literally in my living room, where I produced the first prototypes by hand. After a successful crowdfunding campaign, I moved production to Romania, something deeply important to me. I wanted to give back to my home country, to create local jobs, and to collaborate with small factories that could help me bring this idea to life. In the beginning, we were producing just 200 pieces at a time.
From the start, I made it a point that no materials should come from outside of Europe. I wanted to work only with small, local factories, places where I know the people personally and understand how things are made.
For the past ten years, I’ve been working with the same stainless-steel factory, one of the oldest in Romania, which still uses traditional methods of production. The process fascinates me, I could talk about it for hours. The glass component is now Bohemian Crystal because it was very difficult to find elsewhere a better price-quality balance. The packaging is made from 100% recycled cardboard sourced from the food industry, and the plastic lids are also produced in Europe.
Over the years, many have suggested that I make a plastic version of the glass, arguing it would be cheaper and easier to sell. But I’ve always stood firmly against that. I didn’t want to put yet another disposable plastic cup on the market. People tend to respect and care for objects made with intention, crafted in small series, far more than for something mass-produced and sold for three euros. And that respect, that care, is exactly what I wanted to inspire through Pointer.
Pointer seems to be about more than glassware - it’s about how we gather, taste, and connect. What role does community play in your work and brand philosophy?
Pointer started as a small glassware brand, but through the wine tastings and pop-up wine & dine events I’ve been hosting, it has grown into something much more. It became a community, a place where people come together to discover new wines, new countries, new dishes, and ultimately, new people. Over the past years, I’ve been genuinely touched to see how many guests came alone to my dinners, met new friends around the table, and then returned together with these new acquaintances to future events. Watching this community grow has been an absolute delight.
Every month, at my wine bar pop-up in Charlottenburg, I get to see familiar faces and meet new ones. It’s always heartwarming when people tell me they’ve been following my work for a long time and finally made it to one of my events, and even more so when they share how much they appreciate what I do for Romanian and Eastern European wines. These encounters are among the most rewarding parts of my work: the conversations, the connections, and the exchange of stories that happen naturally over a glass of wine.
What reflections do you have on introducing such an underdog wine country like Romania to the German market? Are you at all surprised (either positively or negatively) by the feedback?
Bringing Romanian wines to the Berlin market has not been an easy journey, simply because many people don’t even know that Romania produces wine. There were already a few Romanian natural wines available in Berlin when I started, however most of the wineries I import were completely unknown to the public when I first introduced them. It’s been both fun and rewarding to present these wines, to tell their stories, and sometimes even to teach people how to pronounce the grape varieties.
The Berlin audience is wonderfully curious and open to discovery, even if, at the end of the day, many still reach for something familiar, like a German, French, or Italian bottle. What has worked best for me has been creating my own spaces: wine dinners, tastings, and my monthly wine bar pop-up, where I can pour these wines by the glass and share their stories directly. Alongside Romanian wines, I also feature Greek, Serbian, and other Eastern and Southeastern European wines, many of which other amazing wine colleagues import.
It’s often in these moments, offering a small tasting, having a real conversation, that people open up to something new. As I like to say, an open bottle speaks louder than a closed one. It’s been beautiful to watch more and more people grow curious about this part of the world, and to see Romanian wine slowly earning its place at the table.