This is what good wine from the Novac grape tastes like

The Romanian Novac grape produces fresh and vibrant red wines with notes of dark fruit like blackberries and berries. It's rare to find a wine made solely from Novac grapes. Romanian winemakers usually blend the Novac juice with other grapes.

And there's a reason for that. The Novac has a difficult character, both in the vineyard—it dislikes rain and only reaches its full ripeness for a short time—and in the cellar. It takes considerable skill from the winemaker to preserve the fresh fruit in the Novac wine.

The Novac is a cross between the Georgian Saperavi grape and the Romanian Negru Virtos. You're probably unfamiliar with the latter, as it hasn't been used in viticulture for years. As you probably already suspected, this cross was created in a Romanian laboratory in 1987.