CHÂTEAU VARTELY | Individo | Feteasca Neagra | 2017
feteasca neagra
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Tonight we are going to review another single varietal feteasca neagra wine – Individo Feteasca Neagra 2017 by Château Vartely. 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 red variety in Romania. Winemakers in Moldova are still searching for a style that will suit feteasca neagra, as it can produce both, medium-bodied wines with supple palate or bold red wines that can be compared to new-world cabernet sauvignon, mostly due to their firm structure – wines with pronounced typicity and spiciness. This particular wine is also part of the ‘Individo‘ line, that is a set of 9 wines, each one with its own identity and personality. That said, without further ado, let’s take a look at the wine tasting results!
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Take a look at the tasting notes below and our detailed assessment of the wine:
Visual
Hazy but noble ruby color, with rusty garnet shades towards the rim of the glass.
Olfactory
The nose is strong, filled mostly with ripe black fruits: black plum, black cherry, ripe blackberry, blackcurrant, black mulberry, aronia berry and some insistent notes of cherry tree wood. An instant later the nose is filled with nuanced flavours of heavy roasted oakwood, black pepper, nutmeg, anise, tobacco, charred wood and hints of black soil dust.
Gustatory
The wine is extra-dry, with strong alcohol level, high acidity and firm tannins. It feels firm, bold and muscular, with a seedy-green accent and a touch of alcoholic burn on the mouthfeel. This is a quite crisp, austere and very angular feteasca neagra wine, that tastes aggressive, fruity and spicy, with overwhelming acidity. Overall, the wine has a fair balance between its elements and it creates the impression of a quite supple and a bit opulent wine, lacking a bit of harmony, elegance and finesse on the palate.
Aftertaste
The wine has a long finish and a quite pleasing, crisp and green aftertaste.
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This is definitely a fine wine of Moldova and, with a total of 90.2 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 quite youthful feteasca neagra wine that is still on the rise – fruity, spicy and bitter-seedy, with a bit more angularity that expected. It lacks harmony and finesse on the palate, therefore a couple more years of bottle ageing is a must, so that the rough tannins and sharp acidity will get enough time to settle down and round up a bit. Despite its angularity, the wine has plenty of tannic grip a touch of alcoholic warmth showing through on the mouthfeel, thus we would suggest to pair this wine with spicy meaty dishes with smoky accents, like for example a pepper steak or a smoked ribeye steak, so that all the sharpness in the wine will be tempered by the spiciness of the meat. Cheers!
WineStatistics tasting results:
CHÂTEAU VARTELY
Individo | Feteasca Neagra | 2017
grape: | feteasca neagra |
overall rating: | 90.2 |
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.
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