UNICORN ESTATE | Symbioz | Cabernet Sauvignon – Merlot – Rara Neagra | 2013
cabernet sauvignon | merlot | 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 very rare wine, as it is a red blend, that is made of cabernet sauvignon, merlot and rara neagra varieties – the winemaker’s flagship wine – Symbioz Cabernet Sauvignon – Merlot – Rara Neagra 2013 by Unicorn Estate. This wine is part of the ‘Symbioz’ line, which is the winemaker’s private collection and, as is the norm for those kind of wines, it has been aged for 18 months in american oak barrels. The wine also went through a 30-days maceration period and is produced in a very limited quantity, as only 1800 bottles have been made. But let’s not put too much emphasis on the theory side, without further ado, 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
Hazy and deep garnet color, and quite opaque, with pale ruby shades towards the rim of the glass.

Olfactory
The nose is strong, filled mostly with ripe red fruits and spicy flavours: ripe sour cherry, overripe cranberry, ripe red plum, ripe redcurrant, dried cherry, dried cranberry, ripe marionberry and cherry tree wood. An instant later the nose is filled with nuanced notes of roasted oakwood, vanilla, nutmeg, violets, red pepper, rooibos tea, sweet tobacco and some subtle hints of dried banana.

Gustatory
The wine is dry, with high alcohol level, high acidity and ripe tannin. It feels fruity, tannic and elegant, with a nuanced seedy-crisp accent. This is a quite firm, expressive but quite delicate wine, as it tastes complex and well structured. The wine has a good overall balance between fruit and barrique, with a touch of alcoholic warmth showing through on the mouthfeel.

Aftertaste
It has a long finish and an balanced, seedy-crisp and grippy 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 fine example of a noble-elegant wine, but one that is already past its prime form and maybe already on the very edge of decline. The wine feels just  bit angular due to its overwhelming acidity and lacks some harmony and a bit of complexity. We’ve already mentioned before that it is always better to drink a wine a year too soon than a day too late, as we can now only guess of how good this wine was in its prime form, when it was right there, at the top of the slope. We would suggest to pair this wine with meaty dishes with bloody-irony accents, like for example a crusted beef carpaccio with parmesan cheese or a classic beef tartare with capers. Enjoy!

WineStatistics tasting results:

UNICORN ESTATE
Symbioz | Cabernet Sauvignon – Merlot – Rara Neagra | 2013

grape: | cabernet sauvignon | merlot | rara neagra |

region: Moldova | Stefan-Voda

overall rating: | 91.4 |

maturity: over its 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.