GITANA WINERY | Saperavi | 2016
saperavi

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Tonight we are going to review a rare wine that is growing in quality with each passing season – Saperavi 2016 by Gitana Winery. This is a single varietal saperavi wine, which is Georgia’s main red variety. Saperavi is a teinturier grape variety, which means that the flesh of the berry is also dark, therefore the wines are deep in color with nuanced acidity and lots of tannin, which makes them respond well to ageing. In fact the resulting wines are so deep in color that some wineries label them as black wines instead of red. That said, without further ado, let’s move on, straight to the tasting and skipp all the theory!
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Take a look at the tasting notes below and our detailed assessment of the wine:

Visual
Deep and noble ruby color with elegant purple shades towards the rim of the glass.

Olfactory
The nose is strong, filled mostly with ripe black fruits and spicy flavours: leather, sweet wood, red pepper, sweet tobacco, ripe blue plum, black raspberry, ripe blackberry, black pepper, black mulberry, blackcurrant, nutmeg, dried fig, black cherry, blueberry jam, allspice and some very nuanced notes of anise and mint.

Gustatory
The wine is dry, with high alcohol level, high acidity and ripe tannin. This is a real crowd pleaser – a wine that feels slightly sweet, ripe and spicy, with a very nuanced fruity-leathery accent. This is a quite expressive, seedy and slightly bitter wine, as it tastes flamboyant, supple and extremely appealing on the mouthfeel – a fine example of a new-world style speravi wine. It has a fair overall balance and medium-plus body.

Aftertaste
The wine has a long finish and a pleasing, ripe and seedy-crisp aftertaste.
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This is definitely a fine wine of Moldova and, with a total of 91.3 points scored, this wine is right there, among the best wines we’ve rated so far. Check our complete database on the wine rating page, where you can find all the wines that we have tasted and reviewed or go to the about us page and find out more about our exquisite rating system.

Conclusion: this is a very delicious and extremely appealing saperavi wine that is yet too young to be enjoyed – clearly still on the rise – a wine that can still age for another year or two. That said, we would strongly recommend to drink it now and enjoy it at its peak flamboyance, as we firmly believe that it is always better to drink a wine a year too soon than a day too late. The wine has a medium-plus body, a fine, seedy-tannic grip on the mouthfeel and overwhelming fruitiness with nuanced irony-leathery accents – truth to be told, this is one of the best saperavi wines we’ve tasted so far. Our recommendation is to pair this wine with meaty dishes that are rich in natural umami flavours: rare to medium-rare steaks like for example a seared filet mignon or tournedos rossini. Enjoy!

WineStatistics tasting results:

GITANA WINERY
Saperavi | 2016

grape: | saperavi |

region: Moldova | Valul lui Traian

overall rating: | 91.3 |

maturity: on the rise

conclusion: fine | (highly recommended)

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© 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. Just remember that there are no absolutes of right and wrong in wine appreciation.