Winemaker Notes
An upfront nose of plums and cherries with a light exotic spice lending definition to the intense aromatics. A structured weight with medium-bodied density and a cleansing acidity driving flavor across the palate. Some playful tannins that close out the wine as playful but serious.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
This wine is rustic and just a touch funky. Bright, crunchy red fruit, minerals and earth are bolstered by raspy, savory tannins and lively acidity. Somewhere between light and medium bodied, this is a restrained yet juicy-fruited table wine that's a joy to drink.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2016 Cherry Fields Dolcetto, from the Polish Hill subregion of Clare, features black cherries, plums and faint cocoa notes. It's the biggest of the Unico Zelo wines at 13.8% alcohol, making it medium to full-bodied. The tannins are supple, giving the palate a velvety feel, while hints of bitter almond emerge on the finish.
An easy drinking red with soft fruity flavors—but catchy tannins, Dolcetto is often enjoyed in its native Piedmont on a casual weekday night, or for apertivo (the canonical Piedmontese pre-dinner appetizer hour). Somm Secret—In most of Piedmont, easy-ripening Dolcetto is relegated to the secondary sites—the best of which are reserved for the king variety: Nebbiolo. However, in the Dogliani zone it is the star of the show, and makes a more serious style of Dolcetto, many of which can improve with cellar time.
The Clare Valley is actually a series of narrow north to south valleys, each with a different soil type and slightly different weather patterns along their stretch. In the southern heartland between Watervale and Auburn, there is mainly a crumbled, red clay loam soil called terra rossa and cool breezes come in from Gulf St. Vincent. A few miles north, in Polish Hill, is soft, red loam over clay; westerlies blowing in from the Spencer Gulf influece this area's climate.
The differences in soil, elevation, degree of slope and weather enable the region to produce some of Australia’s finest, aromatic, spicy and lime-pithy Rieslings, as well as excellent Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon and Malbec with ripe plummy fruit, good acid and big structure.
Clare Valley is an isolated farming country with a continental climate known for its warm and sunny days, followed by cool nights—perfect for wine grapes’ development of sugar and phenolic ripeness in conjunction with notable acidity levels.