EQUINOX | Echinoctius | 2015
cabernet sauvignon | rara neagra | malbec

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 perform a trip into the past and re-evaluate one of the best wines that were ever made in Moldova – Echinoctius 2015 by Equinox. This is a wine that we hold dear to our hearts, as it is the winemaker’s flagship wine – a blend of cabernet sauvignon, rara neagra and malbec grape varieties, where each variety has been harvested individually at its optimal ripeness and aged separately for 30 months in new oak. Needless to mention that it has been produced in a very limited edition of only 1600 bottles, thus the wine is a rarity even here in Moldova. That said, without further ado, let’s get straight to the tasting phase and find out how the wine has evolved since our previous review!
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Take a look at the tasting notes below and our detailed assessment of the two wines:

(rev.2019)

(rev.2020)

Visual
Deep and noble garnet color, with hazy copper shades towards the rim of the glass.

Olfactory
The nose is strong, filled mostly with black and red fruit flavours: overripe sour cherry, ripe black cherry, black plum, ripe blackcurrant, overripe sweet cherry, overripe blackberry, ripe black raspberry and candied sour cherry. An instant later the nose is filled with insistent notes of sun dried oakwood, red pepper, nutmeg, black pepper, cherry tree wood, sweet tobacco, dried black plum and some subtle hints of truffles.

Gustatory
The wine is extra-dry, with high alcohol level, high acidity and fine-grained tannin. It feels fruity, tannic and seedy, with a nuanced new-world accent and overwhelming acidity. This is a quite tart, extracted and expressive wine, as it tastes ripe, firm and rich. This wine is still too young at this stage and even a bit off its balance – bitter-crisp and tannic, it definitely lacks some harmony and finesse on the palate. It has a good overall balance, with a complex and well structured body, with overwhelming fruitiness, which is now more on the overripe-to-cooked side, as compared to the fresh-and-ripe style it had at the last year’s review – a clear sign that the wine is now approaching its full maturity phase.

Aftertaste
The wine has a long finish and a quite appealing, seedy-tart aftertaste.

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This is definitely an excellent wine of Moldova and, with a total of 93.3 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 definitely a wine that is very close to its prime form and right there, at the edge of decline. In the one-year-span between our two reviews, the wine evolved, as its profile changed from ripe fruit and youthfully tart mouthfeel, to overripe fruitiness and supple palate with fine-grained tannins. What does this experiment tell us is that there is no magic in winemaking – a wine can only be as good as it is made to be. We’ve already mentioned before that it is of paramount importance to understand a wine’s limits, as there are wines that might gain with age some much-desired elegance and finesse, by losing flamboyance and expressiveness, but there are also wines that are elegant enough in their yearly stages, and age will only take its toll on them in form of overripe or cooked fruitiness and excessive, bitter-seedy astringency on the mouthfeel. It is equally true, that fully mature wines of exceptional quality might develop complex and elegant non-fruity flavours or scents that are virtually impossible to name. Yet the min questions here are the following: would this wine get better with age or do you enjoy it in its current stage? In other words, do you prefer the expressiveness of ripe fruit and the flamboyance of grippy tannins, or do you opt for the delicateness of overcooked fruit and the elegance of fine-grained tannins. It’s up to us to decide. Cheers!

WineStatistics tasting results:

EQUINOX
Echinoctius | 2015

grape: | cabernet sauvignon | rara neagra | malbec |

region: Moldova | Stefan-Voda

overall rating: | 93.3 |

maturity: on the rise

conclusion: excellent | (a must try)

(rev.2019)
(rev.2020)

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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.