FÁUTOR | Late Harvest | Rhein Riesling | 2016
riesling

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 late harvest riesling wine, which is in fact a dessert wine – Late Harvest Rhein Riesling 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 riesling is one of them – in fact it is the most popular grape variety for producing late harvest wines, mostly due to its natural high acidity. But enough theory, without further ado let’s 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
Pale lime-green color with bright, topaz-yellow shades towards the rim of the glass.

Olfactory
The nose is strong, filled mostly with tropical and sweet fruits flavours: yellow apple, overripe yellow pear, lindenflower, pineapple, apricot, acacia flower, candied apple, mango, elderflower, candied apricot, peach, iris flower, daffodil, marmalade, honey, quince jam, white cherry jam, honey melon, lemon jam, persimmon, honeysuckle, ripe nectarine and some very nuanced hints of petroleum and rubber.

Gustatory
The wine is sweet, with moderate alcohol level, high acidity and firm tannin. This is an oily, smooth and supple sweet wine with an appealing, fruity-tropical profile. It tastes syrupy, seedy and crisp, with quite velvety-noble body and a very fine and delicate rubbery accent. This is a real crowd-pleaser, as it display signs of elegance and finesse, with a slight seediness on the mouthfeel.

Aftertaste
It has a long finish and a balanced, seedy-crisp aftertaste.
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This is definitely a fine Wine of Moldova and the overall rating says the same, with 91.8 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 and delicate late harvest wine, right at the summit of its prime form – elegant, noble and extremely appealing, with a nuanced fruity-tropical profile. Our insistent recommendation is to drink it now, as long as it is still full of flamboyance and finesse. 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 high acidity, and this one is no exception – it may age well for another year or two. Our suggestion is to pair this wine with creamy desserts rich in smooth textures, like for example crème brûlée, strawberry-peach panna cotta or a walnut butter cake. Yummy!

WineStatistics tasting results:

FÁUTOR
Late Harvest | Rhein Riesling | 2016

grape: | riesling |

region: Moldova | Valul lui Traian

overall rating: | 91.8 |

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.