Winemaker Notes
Blend: 55% Cabernet Sauvignon, 39% Merlot, 3% Cabernet Franc, 3% Petit Verdot
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
A rich, fruity wine with lots of fine tannins and mineral undertones with some flowers. Medium body, pure fruit and a full finish. Drink now or hold. A blend of 55% cabernet sauvignon, 39% merlot, 3% cabernet franc and 3% petit verdot.
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Wine Enthusiast
This wine’s tannins are firm and initially prominent, bringing out the structure of a classic wine from Saint-Estèphe. At the same time, the wine offers fruitiness, freshness that can only come from the vintage. Drink this balanced wine from 2022.
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Jeb Dunnuck
A classic Saint-Estephe from the sister property of Calon Segur, the 2017 Chateau Capbern (55% Cabernet Sauvignon, 39% Merlot, and the rest Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot) offers lots of blue fruits, green tobacco, and menthol notes as well as a medium-bodied, elegant style on the palate. It’s relatively tight and compact on the palate, so give bottles a good 4-6 years in the cellar.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2017 Capbern is medium to deep garnet-purple colored with aromas of baked blackberries, Morello cherries, cassis, fertile loam, unsmoked cigars and sautéed herbs. The palate is medium-bodied, firm and grainy with a good black fruit core and red fruit sparks on the finish. The wine was aged for 18 months in French oak, 60% new. The final blend is 55% Cabernet Sauvignon, 39% Merlot, 3% Cabernet Franc and 3% Petit Verdot.
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Wine Spectator
Fresh and juicy, with pomegranate and damson plum fruit laced liberally with lilac, savory and pebble hints.
Barrel Sample: 88-91
One of the world’s most classic and popular styles of red wine, Bordeaux-inspired blends have spread from their homeland in France to nearly every corner of the New World. Typically based on either Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot and supported by Cabernet Franc, Malbec and Petit Verdot, the best of these are densely hued, fragrant, full of fruit and boast a structure that begs for cellar time. Somm Secret—Blends from Bordeaux are generally earthier compared to those from the New World, which tend to be fruit-dominant.
Deeply colored, concentrated, and distinctive, St. Estephe is the go-to for great, age-worthy and reliable Bordeaux reds. Separated from Pauillac merely by a stream, St. Estephe is the farthest northwest of the highest classed villages of the Haut Medoc and is therefore subject to the most intense maritime influence of the Atlantic.
St. Estephe soils are rich in gravel like all of the best sites of the Haut Medoc but here the formation of gravel over clay creates a cooler atmosphere for its vines compared to those in the villages farther downstream. This results in delayed ripening and wines with higher acidity compared to the other villages.
While they can seem a bit austere when young, St. Estephe reds prove to live very long in the cellar. Traitionally dominated by Cabernet Sauvignon, many producers now add a significant proportion of Merlot to the blend, which will soften any sharp edges of the more tannic, Cabernet.
The St. Estephe village contains two second growths, Chateau Montrose and Cos d’Estournel.