Chateau Fleur Cardinale 2015

Professional Ratings

• 95 James Suckling
  Super rich baking spices across ripe dark plums in a very suave and attractively styled nose. The palate has incredible depth and succulently seductive, fleshy plum flavors. Wow. Try from 2022.
• 94 Jeb Dunnuck
  The 2015 Château Fleur Cardinale is beauty in the vintage and checks in as a blend of 75% Merlot, 20% Cabernet Franc and 5% Cabernet Sauvignon brought up all in new oak. Offering sensational notes of black cherries and currant fruits, toasty oak, graphite, and licorice, it's medium to full-bodied, concentrated, and gorgeously pure and elegant on the palate. It has fine tannin emerging on the finish and is made in a straight, structured, classic style. Give bottles a year to two and it should drink beautifully over the following 15+. I was able to taste this wine three separate times and, surprisingly, it showed best from a bottle purchased here in the US. It has the purity of fruit that's the hallmark of the vintage and is a gem readers should seek out. This wine is an exclusive of American Jeffrey Davies.
• 93 Wine Spectator
  Dark fig and boysenberry confiture flavors run from start to finish here, with a graphite spine embedded along the way. Not shy, but has the cut to pull it off. Best from 2022 through 2032.
• 92 Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
  The 2015 Château Fleur Cardinale is a blend of 70% Merlot, 25% Cabernet Franc and 5% Cabernet Sauvignon matured in 100% new oak. It offers sweet dates and figs tincturing the dark cherry and blueberry fruit on the nose. Heady perhaps, yet there is more delineation here than I have discerned in other vintages. The palate is full-bodied with lush ripe black cherry fruit, blueberry and cassis coming in behind, fanning out towards a plush finish that just needs a little more precision to come through. Barrel Sample: 90-92 Points
• 91 Decanter
  One of the latest to harvest in St-Emilion. Rich, plush and modern – oozes fruit. Tannins are ripe and firm with chocolate notes from the oak. Successful in that seductive, come-hither style. Barrel Sample.