GITANA WINERY | La Petite Sophie | 2016
chardonnay | feteasca regala | 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 legendary wine blend with the label ‘Made in Moldova’ – La Petite Sophie 2016 by Gitana Winery. This is one of the best local white wines and is a blend made of three prime grape varieties: oaked chardonnay, which forms the main body and structure, unoaked feteasca regala, which adds delicateness and elegance to the blend, and unoaked riesling, which is responsible for the enhanced flavour profile. This is the winemaker’s flagship white wine and, as is the norm for those kind of wines, it has been aged for 3 to 4 months in french oak barrels. But let’s get rid of the theory side and move on, straight to the tasting phase!
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Take a look at the tasting notes below and our detailed assessment of the wine:

Visual
Bright, straw-yellow color with translucent greenish hues towards the rim of the glass.

Olfactory
The nose is strong, filled mostly with sweet fruits, jam and honey flavours: raisin, honey, fresh hay, quince jam, dried fig, yellow pear, yellow apple, overripe quince, pineapple, straw grass, dried apricot, persimmon, iris flower, sweet lemon, vanilla, fresh oakwood, honeysuckle and some nuanced notes of botrytis affected grapes.

Gustatory
The wine is dry, with high alcohol level, high acidity and ripe tannin. This is a round, intense and expressive wine with a fruity-tropical profile. It tastes smooth, elegant and complex, with a touch of alcoholic warmth showing through towards the end of the plate. The wine feels quite plump and supple, yet it does display some signs of angularity and slight sharpness on the mouthfeel. It also has some hints of savoriness s it display a quite fruity-herbal profile, with a noble, yet lean and opulent body.

Aftertaste
It has a long finish and a balanced, even velvety, yet bitter-crisp aftertaste.
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This is definitely a fine Wine of Moldova and the overall rating says the same, with 91.1 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 one of the best local white blends – bold, elegant and very appealing, with a fruity-tropical profile and some nice hints of minerality out there. This is a fine example of a wine that is right there, in its prime form, and right there, on the verge of decline slope. This is why we do not recommend for any further bottle ageing as we firmly believe that it is always better to drink a wine a year too soon than a day too late. Our recommendation is to pair this wine with creamy pasta dishes or light summer salads, like for example shrimp alfredo pasta or pear and blue cheese salad. Enjoy!

WineStatistics tasting results:

GITANA WINERY
La Petite Sophie | 2016

grape: | chardonnay | feteasca regala | riesling |

region: Moldova | Valul lui Traian

overall rating: | 91.1 |

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.