VINARIA NOBILA | Merlot | 2014
merlot

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Tonight we are going to review another single varietal merlot wine – Merlot 2014 by Vinaria Nobila. This is the successor of the famous Merlot 2012 wine and because it is one of the winemaker’s flagship wines, it has been aged for 24 months in new oak barrels, which is quite a lot. Merlot is usually regarded as the underdog to cabernet sauvignon, but make no mistake here – merlot wine is first class. Cool climate merlot is more structured with green tannins and round body, while warm climate merlot is more fruit-forward with ripe tannins, but let’s get rid of the theory side – on to the tasting!
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Take a look at the tasting notes below and our detailed assessment of the wine:

Visual
Deep and noble ruby color, with dark crimson shades towards the rim of the glass.

Olfactory
The nose is strong, filled mostly with black fruits and spice: black mulberry, black cherry, blackcurrant, black plum, blackberry, ripe sour cherry, red and black pepper. An instant later the nose is filled with nuanced notes of medium roasted oakwood, nutmeg, dried cranberry, dried cherry, tobacco, black tea and some elegant hints of chocolate.

Gustatory
The wine is dry, with high alcohol level, high acidity and firm tannin. It feels bold, oaky and muscular, with a firm, extracted and fruity accent. This is a quite woody, tannic and seedy wine, as it tastes bitter-tart and quite a bit angular. The wine has a fair overall balance, where the wood dominates over the fruit, with a touch of alcoholic warmth showing through on the mouthfeel.

Aftertaste
It has a medium-plus finish and an balanced, bitter-seedy aftertaste.
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This is definitely a fine Wine of Moldova and the overall rating says the same, with 90.4 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 is yet too young to drink now, as the tannins and acidity are yet to settle down and round up the wine’s body. We would recommend 2 to 3 more years of bottle ageing, so that the wine will get closer to its prime form, as the potential is there. Despite its youthfulness, the wine has plenty of tannic grip on the palate and a dense, rich, and enormously concentrated palate, which is mixing power with finesse. You can improve the balance by pairing this wine with spicy, meaty dishes, like for example an asian tenderloin steak or a spicy flank steak with soy sauce marinade, so that all the angularity in the wine will be tempered by the flavours of the meat. Enjoy!

WineStatistics tasting results:

VINARIA NOBILA
Merlot | 2014

grape: | merlot |

region: Moldova | Stefan-Voda

overall rating: | 90.4 |

maturity: over 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.