Winemaker Notes
This is a well-structured wine with intense ripe fruit aromas and well-integrated oak flavors. Under proper cellar conditions, it can be aged 2-4 years after release evolving into a velvety and more composite wine.
This wine pairs best with red meat dishes that are rich, intense and spicy.
Professional Ratings
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Wine & Spirits
Despite the challenging vintage, this was the best Nemea we tasted this year, free of excessive ripeness and oak influence, filled instead with a complex, heady array of fruit, spice, herb and forest aromas -- a sort of Greek garrigue. The grapes, grown in the cool, sunny heights of Koutsi, ripened ten days earlier than those in the valley, coming in well before September's rain; twelve monts in oak, only ten percent new, smoothed and lengthened the tannins without adding any noticeable flavor. The end result is firm and savory, a wealth of stony minerality underpinning the cherry flavors. Approachable now, this will continue to age well over the next decade.
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Wine Enthusiast
Coffee, wild-cherry and wet stone aromas start this bold and intriguing red. Still young but nevertheless delicious, it offers flavors of plum, warming spices and prune. The finish is fresh and spicy.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2015 Agiorgitiko was aged for 12 months in an 85/15 mixture of American and French oak (only 5% new). Sourced from 15-year-old vines, this "regular" Agiorgitiko can be a fine wine in its own right. This year seems like one of the best in the brand. If you're thinking this grape produces only simple, fruity wines, then here's evidence to the contrary. This won't have the depth of the Estate red, to be sure, but it is nicely structured, tight and shows fine mid-palate finesse. If you let it sit awhile (it needed a couple of hours when I first saw it), it shows that classic fragrance of strawberry and raspberry as fruit flavors come to the foreground, too. Tightly wound at the moment (although that will change in the near future), this is more of a food wine than one of those "simple sippers" that this grape can produce. It won't ever have the richness of the Estate bottling, but many will appreciate its greater elegance. It could really use a little more time in the cellar. It should age pretty well, if the mid-palate concentration keeps up with the structure.
Native the Peloponnese peninsula of Greece, Agioritiko is the star variety here and in fact, the only one permitted to carry the Nemea appellation. While it favors the hot Mediterranean climate of Greece, it performs best in Nemea’s high altitude mountain vineyards between 1,350 to 2,000 feet where fully ripe grapes can also achieve great acidity and structure. Somm Secret—As one of Greece's oldest varieties, wines made from Agioritiko were historically often associated with the half-god Heracules and referred to as the "Blood of Heracles.”
Home of Greece’s famous and praise-worthy red variety, Agiorgitiko, Nemea is part of the Peloponnese.
INA2555_2015 Item# 169711