CRESCENDO | Feteasca Neagra | 2017
feteasca neagra
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Today we are going to review another single varietal feteasca neagra wine – Feteasca Neagra 2017 by Crescendo. Feteasca Neagra is an indigenous romanian grape variety that has been grown for hundreds of years on substantial plantings in the south of Moldova and eastern Muntenia and today, it is the most planted variety in Romania – a variety that has not been yet explored at its full potential in Moldova. This particular wine has been produced at the Professional School of Nisporeni by its students, using the modern winemaking techniques, like for example ageing the wine in french oak barrels. That said, without further ado, let’s skip the theory and take a look at the tasting notes!
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Take a look at the tasting notes below and our detailed assessment of the wine:
Visual
Quite pale ruby color with hazy purple shades towards the rim of the glass.
Olfactory
The nose is rich, filled mostly with black fruit flavours: blackcurrant, blackberry, black plum, black cherry, charcoal, black soil dust, black tea and nuanced hints of smoked plum. An instant later the nose is filled with notes of black pepper, nutmeg, roasted oakwood, cloves, tobacco, charred wood, licorice and some nuanced hints of anise.
Gustatory
The wine is dry, with high alcohol level, high acidity and green tannin. It tastes angular, austere and seedy, with an extracted and quite youthful-tart accent. The wine has a burning alcoholic warmth on he mouthfeel, which forms a rough and green sensation on the finish. It feels smoky, woody and quite bitter in the mouth, thus it creates the impression of a quite aggressive feteasca neagra wine. This is a wine that badly lacks some harmony between its elements, as in its current state it feels unpolished.
Aftertaste
The wine has a medium-plus finish and a quite green, bitter-seedy aftertaste.
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This is definitely a fair wine of Moldova and, with a total of 89.3 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 quite rough feteasca neagra wine – woody, smoky and austere – a wine that definitely lacks structure and harmony on the palate. Even though it can resist more bottle ageing (between 24 and 36 months), we would not really recommend it, as the wine is too angular to hold any promises for further improvement. This is a wine that should be enjoyed sooner rather than later – maybe in the next 12 or 18 months from now. There are wines that might gain some elegance with age (if you’re lucky enough) while losing most of the flamboyance, but there are also wines that does not have the prerequisites for bottle ageing, thus enjoying them young and fresh is the better idea. That said, our recommendation is to pair this wine with smoky meaty dishes, like for example a barbequed tomahawk steak or a T-bone seasoned with spicy mix. Cheers!
WineStatistics tasting results:
CRESCENDO
Feteasca Neagra | 2017
grape: | feteasca neagra |
overall rating: | 89.3 |
maturity: on the rise
conclusion: fair | (quite good)
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