PURCARI | Negru de Purcari | 2015
cabernet sauvignon | saperavi | rara neagra

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 famous wine blend with the label ‘Made in Moldova’ – a wine that has acquired a legendary status over the years – Negru de Purcari 2015 from Purcari. The blend is composed of cabernet sauvignon, saperavi  and rara neagra grape varieties, harvested and selected by hand, produced using traditional methods and aged for 18 months in french oak barrels, where saperavi is playing the role of a violin in an orchestra, adding those amazing velvety-leathery notes, while rara neagra is the cello, bringing on the local terroir and those subtle rustic accents. That said, let’s get rid of the theory part and find out just how good this wine really is – 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 purple color, with nuanced indigo shades towards the rim of the glass.

Olfactory
The nose is strong, filled mostly with blue and black fruits flavours: blue plum, ripe blackberry, black cherry, black mulberry, blueberry, sour cherry, black marionberry, blackcurrant, chokeberry, black raspberry, violets, and lavender notes. An instant later the nose is filled with elegant notes of medium roasted oakwood, black pepper, nutmeg, cloves, leather, black soil and some subtle hints of anise.

Gustatory
The wine is dry, with high alcohol level, high acidity and fine tannin. It feels complex, velvety and elegant, with a nuanced fruity-savory accent. This is a fine, firm and quite bold wine, as it tastes supple and well structured on the mouthfeel. The wine has a fair overall balance and a quite noble structure, with a fine-grained and tannic plate.

Aftertaste
It has a long finish and a balanced, bitter-crisp aftertaste.
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This is definitely a fine Wine of Moldova and the overall rating says the same, with 91.4 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 quite appealing and harmonious wine that is just around the corner of its prime form – still on the rise, therefore we would suggest up to 3 more years of bottle ageing. Despite its youthfulness, the wine has a nice, fine-tannic grip on the mouthfeel, which leads to a full-bodied mid-palate, firming on beautifully with a leathery yet velvety finish. The blend has a very nice balance between fruit and wood, where the woody notes slightly dominates over the variety flavours, but still fusion together into a fruity-savory mix of aromas to gain more grip on the finish, mixing power with finesse. In order to amplify its elegance, we would recommend to pair this wine with muscular meaty dishes, like for example a tomahawk steak or a spicy t-bone steak. Enjoy!

WineStatistics tasting results:

PURCARI
Negru de Purcari | 2015

grape: | cabernet sauvignon | saperavi | rara neagra |

region: Moldova | Stefan-Voda

overall rating: | 91.4 |

maturity: on the rise

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.