GITANA WINERY | Lupi | 2015
cabernet sauvignon | merlot | 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 we are going to review tonight has acquired a legendary status over the last decade – Lupi 2015 by Gitana Winery. This is a Bordeaux-style red blend, named after a pack of wolves that settled in the area where the grapes are grown, Lupi (which literally translates as ‘wolves’) is the winemaker’s flagship wine and one of the most famous wines with the label ‘Made in Moldova’. The wine itself is a blend of cabernet sauvignon, merlot and saperavi grape varieties, aged for 24 months in big russian oak barrels, followed by another 14 months in american oakwood casks, but let’s not get carried away by the theory side, 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
Deep and noble, but not opaque, garnet color with bright ruby shades towards the rim of the glass.

Olfactory
The nose is strong, filled mostly with ripe black fruits and leathery flavours: ripe blackberry, black plum, dried plum, leather, ripe black mulberry, black raspberry, overripe black cherry, black mulberry jam, black cherry jam, overripe sour cherry, blackcurrant and some nuanced hints of dried fig. An instant later the nose is filled with elegant notes of roasted oakwood, red and black pepper, chocolatte, sweet tobacco, nutmeg, cigar box and noble hints of cinnamon.

Gustatory
The wine is medium-dry, with high alcohol level, high acidity and ripe tannin. This is a real crowd pleaser wine, as it feels slightly sweet, flamboyant and very elegant, with a nuanced fruity-spicy accent. This is a quite extracted, velvety and noble wine, as it tastes leathery, ripe and extremely appealing on the mouthfeel – a fine example of a new-world wine blend. The wine has a fair overall balance and a well structured, a bit woody and quite nuanced mid-palate.

Aftertaste
It has a long finish and a noble, sweet and grippy aftertaste.
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This is definitely a fine Wine of Moldova and the overall rating says the same, with 91.6 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 extremely aromatic wine that is still on the rise – a wine that can age for another 2 or 3 years, yet, a wine that can be enjoyed even now. It has a nuanced leathery accent on the mouthfeel, that evolves into an elegant mid-palate. Despite all its noblesse, this wine lacks a bit of complexity and structure, still, it has a very nice balance between fruit and wood, with the later dominating a bit over the former. In order to amplify its elegance, we would recommend to pair this wine with spicy dishes with sweet accents, like for example tournedos rossini or beef carpaccio with soy sauce. Enjoy!

WineStatistics tasting results:

GITANA WINERY
Lupi | 2015

grape: | cabernet sauvignon | merlot | saperavi |

region: Moldova | Valul lui Traian

overall rating: | 91.6 |

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.