Villa Bassarea Syrah 2014 – a wine that you must taste in 2018
Every wine that has arrived at our home receives special attention. No matter the colour, the price or the cellar. We just try to explore carefully every scent of it. However, there are wines that make us extremely excited even before we open them. And one of them is Syrah 2014 by Villa Bassarea, a small wine cellar in Southeastern Bulgaria. We even felt hesitant opening the bottle because only a thousand bottles of it have been produced. And we are holding one of them.
Now we will tell you about a wine that you must taste in 2018. Because we are pretty sure that it will be sold out and drunk out by the end of the year. So we prepared well, Andrey cooked a wonderfully pairing grilled steak with mashed potatoes and we sat to enjoy it.
Number 60
We had the bottle №60. Yes, the bottles are hand-numbered. We loved the beautiful black label and the elegant dark bottle. But the more we loved what was inside – that amazing elixir that has matured in new 300-litre oak barrels for 18 months. The wine is a typical warm-climate syrah (or shiraz), with its dark red colour, full body and rich flavours.
The wine had fermented with wild yeast that underline the terroir of South Sakar mountains. This region in Bulgaria is wonderful for wine growing. And Merlot and Syrah are the top performers of the area.
Two things caught our eyes (and tongues) in Syrah 2014 Reserve by Villa Bassarea. First one is the extremely soft tannins. Maria is very sensitive to tannins and these made her say “wow” – so soft and velvet. The second interesting thing was the lack of sweetness in the end. Usually we find a sweet finish in Syrah wines but it was not present here. It was rather spicy, slightli sticky, with a boquet of tastes, more like a ripe blackberry.
Villa Bassarea
Villa Bassarea is a new discovery for us but we are impressed. Their vineyards are located in South Sakar mountains, near the town of Harmanli. This is a beautiful region, quite unexplored. In the recent years many new wineries appeared there and we are eager to explore them. We love meeting the people behind them – usually families with wine growing traditions or just wine enthusiasts ready for experiments. So we are soon heading to Villa Bassarea to visit them on site.
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Syrah and food
[tooltip tipcontent=”Wikipedia”] Syrah wines[/tooltip] usually have intensive and rich taste and good maturing potential. These grapes need more sun to ripen and the area of South Sakar mountains offers wonderful conditions, competing with its motherland near Rhone river. And all of this sun is collected in the bottles of Syrah 2014 Reserve.
Syrah is pairing wonderfully with pork barbecue or grilled steak, seasoned with pepper, onions and other spices. Blue cheese would also be a great companion to the matured wine. We served it at 16-18°C.
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