Dessert wines are not overly sold in Croatia. Which is a paradox, as dessert wines are the highest quality segment of our wine industry. The particularity of Croatian sweet wines is best witnessed by countless awards for Ilok Cellars, Bodren, Krauthaker, Kutjevo and other producers at the most important world fairs. All of which did not do much for better sales of dessert wines, with the exception of Momjan Muscats and one or two brands of Prosecco. Then someone at Badel imagined the great Dalmatian vineyard Korlat could yield a dessert wine. Thus the Korlat Merlot Boutique was created, which right away managed to sell 28 thousand bottles.
Korlat Boutique is so popular it does not last from harvest to harvest, bars and restaurants often run out of this wine during the summer, made of Merlot grapes dried on vines. Today we tasted a bottle from one of the first Korlat Boutique series from 2015, just arriving to the market. The very first pour quite clearly unveils the secret to Boutique’s success. The wine has a very lovely, dramatic ruby-red colour bordered with mild nuances of purple, which increases the visual effect. On the nose are many baked berry fruits, which makes Korlat Boutique leave an impression of chocolate cake with raspberries and blueberries; after a few minutes comes a scent of baked plum and cherry, while vanilla rounds off the entire experience of this ultra-hedonistic wine.
It is especially important that Korlat Boutique is not overly sweet. On the contrary, when we tasted it with a piece of 57-percent Cachet, the chocolate became sweeter than on its own, which means the wine is significantly less sweet than the relatively bitter chocolate. Moderate sweetness, abundant fruit, associations of chocolate cakes, complete rotundity, attractive colour and the utterly important freshness are arguments which should make the new Boutique an absolute bestseller in its genre.
Translated from Plava Kamenica.
