ET CETERA | Serendipity | 2015
feteasca neagra | saperavi

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.

The wine that we are going to review today is a very rare wine blend from the flagship line of the winemaker’s premium wines, also known as the ‘black label’ – Serendipity 2015 by Et Cetera. This is the successor of the already famous Serendipity 2014 and 2013 wines and, as is the norm for this class of wines, it has been produced in a limited edition of only 7254 bottles and aged for 18 months in new oak barrels. But, there’s one thing that sets this one apart from its predecessors – the blending formula has changed, as it is now made of feteasca neagra and saperavi varieties, whereas the previous editions were a blend of feteasca neagra and cabernet sauvignon. ‘Serendipity’ means happy accident, but is this wine an accident at all? Well let’s find it out – let’s get straight to the tasting!
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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 garnet shades towards the rim of the glass.

Olfactory
The nose is strong, filled mostly with red fruit and spice flavours: ripe sour cherry, ripe red cherry, redcurrant, cranberry, blackberry, blackcurrant, ripe black plum, black tea, red mulberry, marionberry, leather and some nunced irony notes. An instant later the nose is filled with notes of red pepper, nutmeg, black pepper, anise, roasted oakwood, sweet tobacco and some nuanced hints of cherry tree wood.

Gustatory
The wine is dry, with high alcohol level, high acidity and fine tannin. It feels supple, round and opulent, with a quite tart and bold body. This is a quite lean, firm and seedy wine, as it tastes woody yet fruit-forward and maybe just a bit too acrid on the mouthfeel. The wine has a fair overall balance, with a fine-tannic grip on the palate.

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 91.0 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 youthfull wine that has yet to reach the prime of its form. Due to its high acidity and grippy tannins, this is  wine that requires a couple more years of bottle ageing (at least 2 more years). We would recommend to pair this wine with meaty dishes that are rich in meaty-umami flavours, like for example a medium-rare filet mignon with garlic and butter or a very-rare filet mignon with red wine reduction sauce, just remember to keep the filet mignon steak rare, so that it will complement all those irony-leathery notes in in the wine and will enrich its texture with even more elegance. Cheers!

WineStatistics tasting results:

ET CETERA
Serendipity | 2015

grape: | feteasca neagra | saperavi |

region: Moldova | Stefan-Voda

overall rating: | 91.0 |

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.