CRICOVA | Vin Nobil | 2013
chardonnay | sauvignon blanc
WineStatistics will be evaluating wines in no particular order on no particular schedule. Just stay tuned and you will never miss one. If the wine is tasted more than once, the rating table will be updated so as to reflect all the new impressions and observations. The logic is simple – the more we taste, the more we learn.
We continue to review Wine of Moldova and keep up with the white wine theme, but this time we are going to review a white blend. Blending is a technique, used by the winemakers, meant to improve the overall quality of their wines, but let’s not get too much into the theory side, better let the tasting do the talking. The wine that we’ve selected for the review tonight is not quite well known, for now, because it is quite intriguing, it is a blend of chardonnay and sauvignon blanc – Vin Nobil 2013 from Cricova.
Let’s take a deeper look at the tasting notes and the wine’s review statistics:
Visual
The wine has a brilliant bright, pure yellow color, with a translucent, topaz-yellow rim-color.
Olfactory
The nose is strong with no signs of wine faults. The first nose is sharp and insistent, with quite nuanced notes of sweet fruits and citrus: pineapple, quince, lemon, yellow apple, yellow pear, yellow mirabelle, a bit of white cherry and a hint of mango. Later on, the bouquet evolve into some bitter-sweet aromas of dried banana, butter and olive oil – which is a clear hint of barrel maturation.
Gustatory
The wine is medium dry or off-dry, with some hints of residual sugar. It has moderate alcohol level, high acidity and medium tannin, which makes the wine taste just a bit acrid, but quite oily and round. The wine has a good overall balance, it taste quite fruit-forward, rich and velvety-smooth – it resembles a nontraditional, old-world blend, with a nuanced, rich but oily-unctuous profile, very much alike of a barrel fermented sauvignon blanc.
Aftertaste
The wine has a long finish and a velvety-crisp aftertaste – it tastes noble, fair and silky at the same time.
This is definitely a fine Wine of Moldova and the overall rating says the same, with 88.8 points scored it is right there, among the best wines we’ve tasted so far. Please click on the chart icon on the left in order to get to the wine rating page, where you can find all the wines we’ve tasted to date.
Last but not least, it is to be mentioned that this is a quite delicate blend – it consists of a classic, buttery chardonnay, blended with some sauvignon blanc, to add crispness and nuanced citrus notes. To be honest, this wine is quite appealing – it’s unbelievable smooth – the chardonnay profile dominates the palate, but the sauvignon blanc adds that bit of extra, that transforms the wine into a fresh and easy to drink mixture. But the most fascinating thing about this blend is that it pairs extremely well with fish, especially salmon, and sauce based foods, courtesy of its oily texture and high acidity, that can cut through the fats of fish and sauce.
WineStatistics tasting results:
CRICOVA
Vin Nobil | 2013
grape: | chardonnay | sauvignon blanc |
overall rating: | 88.8 |
conclusion: fine | highly recommended
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(c) The WineStatistics ratings are based solely on our own knowledge of the world of wine and on our personal wine tastes, which may, or may not, differ from yours – the reader. There are no absolutes of right and wrong in wine appreciation.
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