EQUINOX | Rara Neagra | 2014
rara neagra

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 once again and we have chosen quite a different wine this time, a 100% indigenous grape variety from Moldova – Rara Neagra 2014 from Equinox. It is a single-variety rara neagra grape wine and even though this is an indigenous grape variety, the truth is, only a handful of winemakers here in Moldova do grow this variety, and even fewer of them have the courage to produce single varietal, high quality, rara neagra wines.

Let’s take a deeper look at the tasting notes and the wine’s review statistics:

Visual
The wine has a young, deep purple color, with the rim-color of a translucent garnet shade.

Olfactory
The nose is clean and rich, with no signs of wine faults. The first nose brings nuanced notes of black and red fruits: ripe sour cherry, sweet cherry seeds, red plum, black cherry, blackberry, jostaberry and pomegranate. A bit later comes tertiary aromas with notes of wormwood, red pepper, hazelnut, black tea, dark chocolate and the noble scent of a medium roasted oakwood.

Gustatory
The wine is bone-dry, with no signs of residual sugar. It has quite high, but well integrated alcohol level, high-plus acidity and dry tannin. This is an expressive, fruit-forward wine with nuanced seedy-spicy notes. A wine with a rich complexity and a well accented structure – a good example of a medium bodied wine. It has a fair overall balance, the wine tastes delicious, a bit woody and a bit sharp.

Aftertaste
The wine has a medium finish and a well balanced aftertaste. It feels bitter-seedy, hot and a bit tart towards the end.

This is definitely a fine Wine of Moldova and the overall rating says the same, with 89.6 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 wine raises the bar for indigenous grape varieties – it is a wine that can preserve the main varietal aromas of a single-variety rara neagra grape and, at the same time, it can share a little part of its priceless terroir. On the other hand, we get a barrel maturated rara neagra wine, made of grapes harvested at their full maturity, a wine with a good ageing potential thanks to its high acidity and dry tannin. As a conclusion, we can only bow in respect to those, who dare to produce high quality wines, made of indigenous grape varieties – wines that represent Moldova as a winemaking country on the international scene, wines that are a source of national pride.

WineStatistics tasting results:

EQUINOX
Rara Neagra | 2014

grape: | rara neagra |

region: Moldova | Stefan-Voda

overall rating: | 89.6 |

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.