Make sure to try this wine
Edi Simcic, Kozana, Chardonnay, 2017
3,5 NJP of 5,0 NJP
Edi Simcic, Kozana, Chardonnay, 2017 (35 EUR when purchasing in the winery) white dry wine, Goriska Brda, Primorje, Slovenia, 3,5 NJP of 5,0 NJP (85 points of 100 points) (07-11-2020 by Nenad Jelisic)
This vintage of Kozana Chardonnay from the Simcic family (Alex and Edi), which comes 100% from the Kozana vineyard, is not as good as the 2015 vintage that got 4,5 NJP of 5,0 NJP, but regardless it the wine belongs to one of the best Chardonnay-wines from vintage 2017 that NJ Wines tasted in 2020. For the aroma itself, the wine gets 5,0 NJP of 5,0 NJP. What makes that the wine gets "only" 3,5 NJP of 5,0 NJP is that it lacks a little better concentration and fruitiness. Everything else is there. The aroma is big, complex, concentrated and aromatic. It is filled with sweet spices, where vanilla stands out clearly, sweet exotic fruits, citrus fruits, yellow pears, yellow apples and freshly baked brioche. The flavour is fresh, mineral and complex. It is filled with citrus fruits, minerals, green apples, green pears, sweet spices and exotic fruits. The wine has a really good acidity that in combination with a good concentration and fruitiness do that the wine will develop for up to 5 years until i.e. until to the year 2025. But it will be enjoyable for at least another 10 years i.e. until the year 2030. With some better concentration and fruitiness, the wine would have an aging potential of at least 10 years.
Edi Simcic Kozana Chardonnay 2017 will go really well as an aperitif wine before the meal or with sliced cold smoked salmon with creamy potato salad (boiled potato, crème fraiche, mayonnaise and a little capers) or with hot smoked mackerel with fresh potato salad (boiled fresh potato, cherries tomatoes, chives, olive oil, lemon juice and Dijon mustard) or with seafood salad (lobsters or shrimps or both, crème fraiche, mayonnaise, a little horseradish and cherry tomatoes) or with stir-fried red curry chicken (a little olive oil, small pieces of chicken, yellow onion, bamboo shoots, red peppers, zucchini, red curry and coconut milk). It should be drunk at about 8°C from large Burgundy glasses, if possible, from Orrefors, Spiegelau or Riedel.
The grapes for the wine are hand harvested. Vines are 23 years old. The soil on which the vines grow consists of various forms of weathered flysch (called local opoka), which consists of thin and cyclically repeated sedimentary layers of limestone, mudstone and sandstone, and marl (clayey soil that contains plenty of calcium carbonate). The soil such as this is mineral rich, and has very good drainage properties that means that the vines have to go very deep to find water. A combination of all of the above mentioned factors does that Edi Simcic Kozana 2017 has a clear mineral flavour. The wine is first macerated for about 2 hours in press and then fermented in 70% used and 30% new 225 litre oak barrels (barriques) from France under a temperature between 22 and 24 degrees for about 25 days. After the fermentation, the wine is aged in the same oak barrels as it had been fermented for about 10 months. After the aging, the wine is bottled and aged for about 12 more months.
