ET CETERA | Affinité | 2014
chardonnay | viognier

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.

Tonight we are going to review a wine that is a bit different, as it is a white blend made of chardonnay and viognier grapes. If you are not familiar with chardonnay, you might have a wine problem, but if you are not familiar with viognier, it is perfectly normal, as this rare variety was on the verge of being extinct in the not-so-distant past. The origin of viognier is France, Rhône Valley, but lately one can find world class viognier wines also in USA, South Africa and Australia. But enough theory, we present you the wine we have picked for the review tonight – Affinité 2014 from Et Cetera.

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

Visual
Brilliant yellow color with shades of green towards the rim.

Olfactory
The nose is rich, filled mostly with sweet fruit: yellow pear, green apple, lemon, straw grass, ripe yellow mirabelle, acacia flower, yellow plum, pomelo, quince, white grapefruit and a nuanced scent of moist oakwood with some subtle hints of cat pee.

Gustatory
The wine is medium-dry, with moderate alcohol level, high acidity and medium tannin. It tastes crisp, fresh and lean with nice minerality. This is a very refreshing wine – light, fine and easy to drink – a crowd-pleaser wine with overwhelming acidity. It has a fair overall balance, lacking some character and structure.

Aftertaste
The wine has a medium finish and a balanced, but crisp, aftertaste.
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This is definitely a fine Wine of Moldova and the overall rating says the same, with 89.9 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.

Conclusion: this is a wine in its prime, ready to drink now and not worth bottle-ageing, as in our opinion, it already reached the maximum potential and will be on the decline slope any day from now. To be honest, this wine is surprisingly versatile and it will do wonders to your palate if paired with seafood dishes, like for example smoked salmon blinis, pesto mussels or some oysters, as the leftover of residual sugar in the wine, coupled with its high acidity will complement nicely the zestiness and fat in the food.

WineStatistics tasting results:

ET CETERA
Affinité | 2014

grape: | chardonnay | viognier |

region: Moldova | Stefan-Voda

overall rating: | 89.9 |

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.