We will be evaluating wines in no particular order on no particular schedule. Just stay tuned and you will never miss our reviews. If the wine is tasted more than once, the rating table will be updated so as to reflect all the new impressions and observations.
Today we are going to review a single varietal syrah wine from Romania – Anima Syrah 2016 by Aurelia Visinescu. In a world where bigger is better, syrah is the ideal choice, as it is darker, bolder and spicier than cabernet sauvignon and contains a high amounts of health-invigorating antioxidants. This syrah comes from the famous Dealu Mare region and it has been aged for 13 months in romanian, french and russian oak barriques. Syrah, also known as ‘Shiraz’, can be vinified in two major styles: old-world style and new-world style. The old-world syrah wines tend to have more acidity and earthy-herbaceous aromas, while the new-world shiraz wines are usually fruit-driven with lots of spice. But let us skip all that theory and just move on, straight to the tasting phase!
___________________________________________________________________________
Take a look at the tasting notes below and our detailed assessment of the wine:
Visual
Pale ruby color with hazy garnet shades towards the rim of the glass.
Olfactory
The nose is strong, filled mostly with red and black fruit flavours: overripe sour cherry, blackcurrant, ripe red plum, overripe black mulberry, black plum, black cherry, black raspberry, overripe blackberry and cherry tree wood. An instant later the nose is filled with insistent notes of roasted oakwood, red & black pepper, allspice, cloves, nutmeg, tobacco, dark chocolate, sweet wood and some nuanced hints of vanilla.
Gustatory
The wine is medium-dry, with high alcohol level, high acidity and ripe tannin. It feels extracted, muscular and firm, with a bold and supple body, crisp acidity and grippy tannins. This is a fruit-forward, woody and austere syrah wine, as it tastes astringent, tannic and angular. Overall, the wine has a fair balance between primary fruit and oak flavours and it creates the impression of a quite expansive, peppery and smoky wine.
Aftertaste
The wine has a long finish and an astringent, bitter-seedy aftertaste.
___________________________________________________________________________
This is definitely a fine wine of Romania and, with a total of 91.6 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 fine syrah wine that is quite close to its prime form – yet, one that requires another year or two before it gets there. What makes this wine special is the alcohol content – 14.9% courtesy of a very hot season in the Dealu Mare, which resulted in overripe grapes. All the region’s winemakers are facing a big challenge in the last couple of seasons: either harvest the grapes earlier in the season and risk to get green tannins in the wine due to unripe stems and seeds, or harvest the grapes later in the season and risk to get high alcohol content due to the high sugar concentration in the berries. Without ripe tannins, what you get are wines that are green and rough, which is precisely the effect of grapes harvested too early. To be honest, we’ll opt for the higher alcohol wines, if that is what it takes to get all the complexity and flavour with ripe, fine-grained tannins. That said, for the best wine & food experience, we would strongly recommend to pair this wine with spicy meaty dishes with sweet accents, like for example asian steak with butter sauce, spicy t-bone or balsamic pork chops. Cheers!
WineStatistics tasting results:
ANIMA
Syrah | 2016
grape: | syrah |
region: Romania | Dealu Mare
overall rating: | 91.6 |
maturity: on the rise
conclusion: fine | (highly recommended)
___________________________________________________________________________
© 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.
WineStatistics 