KYSELA PERE ET FILS, LTD.

"The 2018 Epinette is the Merlot-dominated release from this team, and it's 79% Merlot, 8% Cabernet Sauvignon, 8% Cabernet Franc, and 5% Petit Verdot, all from the estate vineyard on Red Mountain. Lots of smoky black cherry and darker currant fruits as well as notes of chocolate, graphite, lead pencil, and chalky minerality emerge from the glass, and this full-bodied beauty is beautifully textured, with a stacked mid-palate, velvety tannins, and a blockbuster finish. It's up with the finest Merlots in the New World and will drink brilliantly for at least a decade, if not longer."

- Jeb Dunnuck (May 2021), 97 pts

"Billed as the estate’s Right Bank blend, the 2017 Epinette is all estate and 53% Merlot, 26% Cabernet Sauvignon, 16% Cabernet Franc, and the rest Petit Verdot. It’s a rich, powerful, Château Pavie-like wine that has classic Red Mountain minerality as well as notes of blackcurrants, chocolate, violets, sagebrush, and white truffles. Rich, medium to full-bodied, and beautifully concentrated, with building tannins, it’s going to benefit from 2-4 years of bottle age and keep for 10-15 years."
- Jeb Dunnuck (April 2020), 95+ pts

"Saturated bright medium ruby. Pungent scents of blackberry, cassis, licorice, minerals, graphite and bitter chocolate, with a hint of violet lift. Then plush, savory and deep in the mouth, with the Merlot creaminess to the fore. Very broad, concentrated flavors of dark berries and graphite minerality saturate the palate and blow past the wine's substantial, dusty but fine-grained tannins on the long back end. This big boy maintains its shape, no doubt partly due to the firming influence of its Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot components. This highly successful Right Bank blend shows more of a Pomerol than a Saint-Emilion plushness of texture, supported by solid tannic structure. - Stephen Tanzer"
- Antonio Galloni's Vinous (December 2019), 93 pts

"I loved the 2016 Epinette from barrel, and it certainly doesn't disappoint from bottle. Sporting a deep purple color as well as a huge bouquet of blackcurrants, black cherries, smoked earth, chocolate, and cedary spice, this flamboyant, powerful beauty hits the palate with loads of fruit, has sweet tannins, no hard edges, building tannins, and a huge finish. It's one seriously pleasure-bent effort that has another 10-15 years of prime drinking."
- Jeb Dunnuck (April 2019), 96+ pts

Go to Force Majeure Epinette

"Dark full ruby. Violet lift to the aromas of blackberry, black raspberry, licorice, subtle peppery herbs and minerals. Wonderfully plush but youthfully unevolved, conveying a smoother texture and more class than the Cabernet, as well as a deeper kernel of primary fruit despite the fact that this is a Bordeaux blend and not a varietal Cabernet Sauvignon. A bit less thick and overwhelming than the Cabernet, and more complex and delineated. Finishes with big tongue- and tooth-saturating tannins that are a bit more suave than those of the Cabernet. - Stephen Tanzer"
- Antonio Galloni's Vinous (November 2018), 94 pts

Go to Force Majeure Epinette