CRAMA ROTENBERG | Emeritus | Merlot | 2015
merlot

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 wine that we were eager to try for such a long time – Emeritus Merlot 2015 by Crama Rotenberg. This is a single varietal merlot wine and is an assemblage of oaked and unoaked merlot, where the oaked part spent 24 month in new oak barrels. Merlot is usually regarded as the underdog to cabernet sauvignon, but make no mistake, merlot wine is first class, that is why, in order to preserve all the primary aromatics of the variety, the winemaker decided to bottle the wine unfiltered. That being said, let’s skip the boring theory phase and 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
Pale garnet color, neither deep nor opaque, with hazy ruby hues towards the rim of the glass.

Olfactory
The nose is strong, filled mostly with ripe black fruits and savory flavours: black plum, cranberry, flint stone, blackcurrant, redcurrant, leather, coal, black soil, black cherry, ripe sour cherry and some hints of violets. An instant later the nose is filled with elegant notes of nutmeg, tobacco, anise, smoke  and some insistent hints of smoked cheese.

Gustatory
The wine is dry, with moderate alcohol level, high acidity and firm tannin. It feels youtfull, tart and supple, with a very nuanced fruity-smoky accent. This is a lean, round and quite acrid wine, which has a fine-tannic grip on the mouthfeel. The wine has a fair overall balance and it feels quite plump and young, thus a bit angular.

Aftertaste
The wine has a medium-plus finish and a seedy-tart aftertaste.
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This is definitely a fine Wine of Romania and the overall rating says the same, with 90.4 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 young yet fine merlot wine that is still on the rise – one that requires a bit more time to round up and reach the peak of its prime form – perhaps 3 or 4 more years of bottle ageing should suffice. It has a tart and tannic grip on the palate, with a touch of alcoholic warmth showing through on the mouthfeel. What makes this wine different, is its wilderness, as it feels quite fruity on the nose, with smoke and dust on the plate – a wine that still has a quite lean, plump and round body nonetheless. We would strongly suggest to pair this one with meaty dishes dressed in sweet red wine sauce, like for example some beef bourguignon or some sticky red wine glazed chicken wings. Noroc!

WineStatistics tasting results:

CRAMA ROTENBERG
Emeritus | Merlot | 2015

grape: | merlot |

region: Romania | Dealu Mare (Ceptura)

overall rating: | 90.4 |

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.