2016 Saints Hills Plavac Mali Dingač Sv. Lucia

The 2016 Dingač is a Plavac Mali and aged for 24 months in new French oak. It comes in at 14% alcohol. Dingač is the name of both the wine and the appellation. With a certain Syrah-like nuance in terms of a little beef around the edges, this shows great right now. It's a little marred by all that new wood, however, giving it a chocolate-vanilla nuance too. Somehow, the fruit rises above it, at least to some extent. There's also some firmness on the finish, giving this a chance to age and show better in time. For the moment, finesse is not its middle name, and it's fair to say the winery shoots itself in the foot with its wood treatment to some extent. The wound is hardly fatal, though. Some people will certainly love this a lot more than others, and it does pretty well. It does need to prove something in the cellar, but let's lean up for the moment. This runs around $40 in local currency in Croatia.