TASCA | Tenuta Regaleali | Vigna San Francesco | Cabernet Sauvignon | 2017
cabernet sauvignon

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Next to the vineyards grow olive trees, wheat fields and almond trees. In the vegetable gardens, in the pastures and in the orchards, men and women work the seasons and give birth to the best products of Sicily. Each with its own character, each with its own rhythms. Today, the biggest challenge is to preserve these places and leave them intact to our children, in constant attention to the protection of every ecosystem.

Today we are going to review a legendary wine, one that we were eager to try for quite some time – a genuine cabernet sauvignon wine from Sicily – Tenuta Regaleali Vigna San Francesco Cabernet Sauvignon 2017 by Tasca d’Almerita. Cabernet Sauvignon is grown all over the world in a wide range of climates and regions and it can produce wines that are very high in tannins and acidity – wines that can mature and develop for many years in the bottle. Cabernet Sauvignon is also a late ripening grape variety, which means that it is best suited for warm climates, where it is capable to produce wines that can reach into realms of perfection. The cabernet sauvignon variety was planted for the first time in Sicily at Tenuta Regaleali in 1985 and today it produces one of the best wines of Italy – the Vigna San Francesco Cabernet Sauvignon. This wine is produced with grapes that are sourced from a single vineyard, grown on the top of the San Francesco hill in the Canalotto valley, with a south-west exposure, at a 570-meter altitude, on sand, loam and clay-based soils. The wine has been aged for 18 months in new 225-liter french oak barriques (Allier and Tronçais) made from fine and medium grained oak staves. But enough with all that theory – that said and 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
colour: deep & opaque ruby color
clarity: hazy-noble ruby shades on the rim

//Olfactory
intensity: powerful & flamboyant
fruit profile: black fruits
__black fruits: blackcurrant | casis | blackberry | bramble | black cherry | black plum | black mulberry | aronia
fruit character: overripe

//Flavor
non fruit: spice | oak | earthy
__spice: black pepper | peppercorn | cloves | nutmeg | tonka seeds
__oak: roasted oakwood | liquorice | sweet tobacco
__earthy: graphite | quartz
primary layer: fruit & spice

//Palate
sweetness: dry
acidity: medium+
alcohol: high
tannin: high
__grip: ripe
balance: good
__dominant: none
body: supple & round | full body

//Taste
fruit profile: black fruits
fruit character: overripe
non fruit: spice & oak
finish: long
aftertaste: velvety-seedy

//Scoring
TASCA | Tenuta Regaleali | Vigna San Francesco | Cabernet Sauvignon | 2017
variety: cabernet sauvignon
country: Italy
region: Sicilia
rating: 96.2

//Conclusion
maturity: developing | can age for 5 to 7 more years
verdict: exceptional | simply epic

//Prediction
RP rating: 92

//Rating
The critics’ rating distribution:

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This is definitely an exceptional wine of Italy and, with a total of 96.2 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.

Verdict: this is a very expressive, extracted and flamboyant cabernet sauvignon wine, with a rich and ripe mouthfeel. The wine is still developing, thus we would recommend to give it more time, in order to allow it to develop further complexity, as the potential is clearly there – the wine could easily resist 5 to 7 more years of bottle ageing. On the nose the it brings an avalanche of overripe black fruits in the foreground, followed by a very noble, spicy-oaky background and an appealing, earthy layer in between the two. On the palate the wine delivers crisp acidity, ripe, fine-grained tannins and a touch of alcoholic warmth that is showing through on the mouthfeel, which leads to a velvety-seedy aftertaste. All in all, this is a complex, well balanced and very harmonious wine with amazing varietal typicity – a blueprint cabernet sauvignon wine, definitely the best we’ve tasted so far. Our recommendation would be to pair it with pepper-crusted Filet Mignon with blue cheese-chive butter or Tournedos Rossini steaks. Cent’anni!

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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.