GRASSL | Reserve | Syrah | 2016
syrah

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Tonight we are going to review a very rare, single varietal syrah wine from Austria – Reserve  Syrah 2016 by Philipp Grassl. In a world where bolder is better, syrah is the perfect choice, as it is darker and spicier than cabernet sauvignon and contains a high amounts of health-invigorating antioxidants. This syrah wine has been produced with grapes sourced from the Carnuntum wine growing area where the Grassl Weingut estate is located. The winery is relatively small – a fine family owned estate, where everything must be straight and clear, with the main focus on quality and fine red wine. The cellar is spotless, operations precise, with wines rarely filtered in order to sustain quality and varietal characteristics. But enough with all that theory – on to the wine tasting phase!
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Take a look at the tasting notes below and our detailed assessment of the wine:

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

Olfactory
The nose is strong, filled mostly with ripe red fruits and very nuanced savory flavours: barnyard, iron, leather, horse saddle, capocollo, prosciutto, black soil dust, sour cherry, redcurrant, red plum, cranberry, wildberry and some subtle but elegant hints of cherry tomato. An instant later the nose is filled with notes of cherry tree wood, nutmeg, red pepper, moist forest floor and some subtle hints of pâté.

Gustatory
The wine is dry, with high alcohol level, high acidity and ripe tannin. It feels savory, elegant and velvety, with a nuanced old-world accent. Despite its savouriness, the wine tastes grippy, complex and elegant, with a noble, meaty profile. This is a firm and tanic syrah wine, as it feels very well balanced and harmonious. Overall, the wine has a good balance between primary fruit aromas and savory flavours, as this is definitely a classic blueprint of an old-world syrah wine.

Aftertaste
The wine has a long finish and an elegant, seedy-velvety aftertaste.
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This is definitely an excellent wine of Austria and, with a total of 92.2 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 fine syrah wine – savory-meaty and noble – one of the best we’ve reviewed so far – a wine that is still developing into the bottle, therefore we would advocate for 3 or 4 more years of bottle ageing. As we’ve already mentioned before, there are wines that might gain with age the much desired elegance and finesse, but there are also wines that are elegant enough in their yearly stages and age will only take its toll on them. Older wines can develop more complex and less fruity flavours – a fully mature wine can offer an explosion of amazingly nuanced scents that are virtually impossible to name – it is a pure, hedonistic pleasure. That said, we would recommend to pair this wine with meaty dishes that are rich in natural flavours, like for example a classic beef tartare or a blue-rare filet mignon steak, so that all those savory-meaty notes in the wine would be perfectly complemented by the flavours of the meat. Prost!

WineStatistics tasting results:

GRASSL
Reserve | Syrah | 2016

grape: | syrah |

region: Austria | Niederösterreich

overall rating: | 92.2 |

maturity: on the rise

conclusion: excellent | (a must try)

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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.