CRICOVA | Amplius | 2014
merlot

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 rare and quite unique – Amplius 2014 from Cricova. This is a single varietal merlot wine with a beautiful story behind the bottle. It all started on a chilly morning in late October, when the sun has barely risen above the vineyard. On that morning the harvest of the overripe merlot grapes has started. The grapes are then put to rest and raisin until late February and only then the winemaking process will start. This method is called ‘apassimento‘, which is used for production of Amarone wines, and often those wines have quite some amount of residual sugars left, sometimes even resulting in demi-dry red wines. After a very long fermentation the wine is then aged in french oak barrels for 24 months, and another 12 months in the bottle, but enough theory, let’s move on with the tasting and find out just how good this wine is.
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Take a look at the tasting notes below and our detailed assessment of the wine:

Visual
Deep but not opaque ruby color, with bright copper hues towards the rim of the glass.

Olfactory
The nose is strong, filled mostly with black fruits and jammy notes: overripe sour cherry, black raspberry, blackberry, dried figs, black mulberry jam, black plum, blackcurrant jam and black cherry jam. An instant later the nose is filled with notes of black tea, roasted oakwood, smoked plum, nutmeg, tobacco, vanilla, red and black pepper and some nuanced hints of cinnamon.

Gustatory
The wine is medium-dry to sweet, with high alcohol level, high acidity and firm tannin. It tastes jammy, extracted and seedy, with a nuanced fruity and sweet accent. This is a quite bold and oaky wine, as it feels tart and tannic, with overwhelming acidity and roughness. The wine is a bit off-balance and has a quite angular and sharp profile.

Aftertaste
It has a medium finish and an balanced, but tart and bitter-seedy 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, that has yet to reach its prime form, as it requires at least a couple more years of bottle ageing to smoothen and round up. It has plenty of tannic grip on the palate, overwhelming acidity and a touch of alcoholic warmth showing through. It is quite special in terms of taste and mouthfeel yet it is too angular to savour at this moment in time. We would recommend to pair this wine with spicy or highly aromatic meat dishes, preferably dressed with sweet red wine sauce, like for example some crusted beef tenderloin with porcini and rosemary or grilled balsamic-garlic steak with thymine in order to enhance the wine flavour profile to a new level. Just enjoy it!

WineStatistics tasting results:

CRICOVA
Amplius | 2014

grape: | merlot |

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.