2017 Keringer Zweigelt 100 Days

Community Tasting Notes (1) Avg Score: 88 points

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  5/25/2023 - forceberry wrote: 81 Points

  100% Zweigelt. Fermented and macerated in stainless steel tanks for 100 days, then racked into barriques for aging. 14,5% alcohol.
  
  Deep, dark and slightly translucent black cherry color. Very heavily oak-driven nose with a prominent streak of chocolatey mocha oak and toasty spice, some sweet black cherry tones, a little bit of butterscotch, light plummy tones, a hint of freshly ground coffee beans and a touch of wood. The wine feels dense, concentrated and polished on the palate with a full body and intense flavors of ripe bilberries and black cherries, some oaky notes of toffee and caramel, light toasty notes of mocha and milk chocolate, a little bit of dark plummy fruit and a hint of extracted woody bitterness. Even if the wine feels big, modern and polished, it is not lacking in structure: the moderately high acidity and rather grippy tannins lend good sense of firmness and balance to the wine. The finish is toasty, moderately grippy and somewhat warm with a long, quite sweet-toned aftertaste of ripe black cherries, some oaky notes of caramel and vanilla, light bilberry notes, a little bit of blackberry jam, a hint of milk chocolate and a touch of overripe dark plums.
  
  A huge and monolithic Zweigelt that might be surprisingly balanced for its enormous size, but there's still no denying that the wine is just way too oaky and overdone. Truly a winemaker's wine if there ever was one. I thought it would've been very interesting to see how a Zweigelt works with extended skin maceration, but it is very hard if not impossible to get any sense of the finer nuances as all one can taste is just sweet, obfuscating oak flavors. Only those sweetest and most powerful fruit flavors pack enough punch to cut through all the wood - and there is very little interest to be found there. All in all, this is not my style of wine, not at all. Maybe people who don't mind if their wines taste like chocolate milkshake and Bourbon might find this enjoyable. Hopefully some of that oak might disappear with age, as the wine seems to be built for aging - but I am not holding my breath.

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