Born in an old landowner family, Anton Bibescu, lawyer, diplomat and writer, was in love with Corcova. The Bibescu family owned in this part of Oltenia over 2000 ha of land. They raised a mansion and around 1920 they grew vignards of noble vine. Corcova soon became Anton and Marta Bibescu’s favorite vacation spot. The trend was that in the summers they would be at the state and in winter they would spend their money in the European capitals, so once flowers filled the hills, horse drawn carriages brought Anton Bibescu to the mansion in Corcova.
Corcova, as estate of the Bibescu family had its glory period at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. Prince Anton Bibescu hired young French agronomist Aristoteles Sauget to manage the vignard. Him and later his sons made Corcova a piece of heaven and also invented Corcovinul and Corcovelul, amazing blendings with bases in cabernet. None of the technologists working in agriculture during the communist period, some commendatory, has been able to recreate them.
Furthermore, Corcova was the favorite vacation spot for Anton Bibescu and Martha Bibescu, as well as for some of their famous friends.
Virgiliu Tătaru, publicist and literary historian from Mehedinti writes in the “Tragica aventură a spiritului”: „Prince Anton Bibescu was more than convinced that only in these places of the charming Motru valley could always find the saught after equilibrium of the body and soul, to engage again, with unimaginable ardor, with hightened energies, in the whirling waves of life, searching for the eternal mystery of man’ destiny on Earth. Here, in the Corcova mansion, he especially liked springs, letting the mesmirizing perfume of many flowers that he thought unique on this Earth take him over and which he tought he wouldn’t find anywhere else. The prince loved falls in Crocova just as much and he lived moments of rare hapiness when he saw the wide vignards overwhelmed with crops and when he touched, like a caress, the plump and greyish grapes that had miraculously gathered the golden treasure of the summer sun.”
Long time ago was when the doors of the mansion opened to receive Nicolae Titulescu. In this unique place in the world, as Anton Bibescu considered it, Mihail Sebastian also found inspiration. The fiction writer and playwright was sentenced to house arrest and Anton Bibescu made all the arrangements to allow Mihail Sebastrian to live in the mansion in Cracova. There he spend unforgettable months, while he wrote the play „Steaua fără nume“ (The unnamed star), initially named „Ursa Mare“ (Ursa major).
About the mansion and its surroundings word got to France. Marcel Proust, a good friend of prince Anton Bibescu, expressed in the letters he sent him, his admiration for these places, which he had truly wanted to know: „Dear names, like Corcova, were so familiar and close like Senlis and a thousand times deader than Bonnelles and i trembled in case i saw them in some release and blamed myself for not knowing enough and other that you seem to care for and maybe known form memories of yours, of Emanuel’s, of princess Bibescu. How much I hold you in my heart i these moments!”, Marcel Proust wrote Anton Bibescu, who was in Corcova.
