Winemaker Notes
Blend: 70% Cabernet Sauvignon, 30% Merlot
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Good depth on the nose with a juicier palate this year, with a mixture of berries, red peppers and cherries. The chalky tannins are still quite firm and the wine delivers lots of fruit, with a long finish. Tight and tense.
Barrel Sample: 93-94 -
Jeb Dunnuck
Made by the team from Calon Ségur with the same technique, the 2024 Château Capbern is based on 70% Cabernet Sauvignon and 30% Cabernet Franc aging in 60% new oak. It shows the purity and elegance of this team in 2024 with its lively cherry, currant, and juicy cassis fruit as well as a beautiful floral character, medium body, a soft, supple, layered mouthfeel, and ultra-fine tannins.
Barrel Sample: 90-92 -
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
A blend of 70% Cabernet Sauvignon and 30% Merlot, the 2024 Capbern is a polished classic, offering up notions of cassis, lilac, licorice and pencil shavings, followed by a medium-bodied, supple and polished palate with good underlying cut and grip. It checks in at 12.9% alcohol.
Barrel Sample: 90-92
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.