FÁUTOR | Late Harvest | Traminer | 2016
gewurztraminer

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Tonight we are going to review a late harvest gewurztraminer wine, which is in fact a dessert wine – Late Harvest Traminer 2016 by Fáutor Winery. Late harvest wines are made from grapes that are left on the vine even after they’ve reached their peak ripeness, thus they become sweeter due to dehydration, therefore the sugar content increases and becomes more concentrated. Technically, any grape variety can be used for the production of late harvest wines, yet there are some varieties that excel more than the others for this wine style and gewurztraminer is one of them. And on that note, without further ado, let’s get rid of the theory and move on straight to the tasting!
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Take a look at the tasting notes below and our detailed assessment of the wine:

Visual
Hazy topaz yellow color with ripe-yellow melon hues towards the rim of the glass.

Olfactory
The nose is strong, filled mostly with jam and honey flavours: honey, raisin, rose petals, candied apricot, quince jam, acacia flower, white cherry jam, honey melon, overripe pear, pineapple, lemon jam, persimmon, iris flower, overripe white apple, elderflower, honeysuckle, ripe nectarine and some nuanced hints of dried fig.

Gustatory
The wine is sweet, with high alcohol level, high acidity and smooth tannin. This is an elegant, honeyed and delicious sweet wine with an appealing, fruity-tropical profile. It tastes supple, noble and crisp, with overwhelming acidity and a very nuanced jammy and flowery accent. The wine feels quite seedy, yet it display signs of elegance and finesse, with a slight angularity on the mouthfeel – a real crowd pleaser wine.

Aftertaste
It has a medium-plus finish and a balanced, seedy-trt aftertaste.
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This is definitely a fine Wine of Moldova and the overall rating says the same, with 91.1 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 very fine late harvest wine at the summit of its prime form – elegant, noble and very appealing, with a fruity-tropical jammy profile. Our insistent recommendation is to drink it now, as long as it is still full of flamboyance. That said, you can still keep it for later occasions, as sweet wines usually respond well to ageing due to high amount of residual sugar and overwhelming acidity. We would recommend to pair this wine with light desserts that are rich in smooth textures, like for example a creamy crème brûlée or some strawberry-peach panna cotta. Yummy!

WineStatistics tasting results:

FÁUTOR
Late Harvest | Traminer | 2016

grape: | gewurztraminer |

region: Moldova | Valul lui Traian

overall rating: | 91.1 |

maturity: in its prime

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.