2018 Force Majeure Cabernet Sauvignon
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Tasting notes
The 2018 Cabernet Sauvignon Red Mountain Estate is much more dense, tannic, backward wine compared to the Walla Walla Estate release. Its deep purple/plum color is followed by a masculine bouquet of crushed rocks, tobacco, iodine, and lead pencil. This carries to a full-bodied Red Mountain Cabernet with gorgeous overall balance, ripe yet building tannins, an undeniable sense of minerality, and a blockbuster finish. Possessing a liquid rock-like minerality (it seems to have been filtered through a bed of rocks), it's mostly educational at this young age and deserves 4-5 years of bottle age. It should keep for 2-3 decades in cold cellars. Previously known as Grand Reve, Force Majeure has skyrocketed to the top of the pyramid in Washington State, in no small part due to their talented winemaker, Todd Alexander, who moved from Bryant Family in Napa to Washington State to focus on this estate. While the focus is on their Red Mountain Vineyard, they make a bevy of world-class wines from throughout the Columbia Valley. Anyone doubting the quality coming from Washington State these days owes it to themselves to try these wines.
Critic scores
Average Score
Stephen Tanzer, Vinous
Jeb Dunnuck
More reviews and scores
Bright, dark ruby to the rim. Fruit-driven aromas of crushed blackberry and blueberry complicated by licorice, bitter chocolate, crushed rock, iron, peppery herbs and spices. No rough edges here but youthfully brooding and backward, offering superb concentration and savory complexity to its tight dark berry, licorice and dark chocolate flavors. Already boasts a sophisticated, fine-grained texture but needs a good three more years to reveal its inherent soil character. Doesn't show quite the dark-chocolatey sweetness of the Epinette but gained in sweetness with aeration. The finish is firmly tannic but suave, displaying lovely rising violety length and a lingering note of peppery herbs. I suspect this wine will eventually merit an even higher score.
Take one sniff of the 2018 Estate Cabernet Sauvignon, and you know it’s Red Mountain—the wine opens with a particular dustiness commonly associated with Red Mountain terroir. Aromas of dusty plum, black cherry skin, currant and cassis are lifted by dusty purple flower and elegant oak spices of cinnamon, nutmeg and vanilla. Full-bodied, the wine is generous on the palate with ripe yet slightly rustic tones of dust-covered berries and a beautifully framed structure with succulent tannins. The wine ends with a long, gripping finish and is food-friendly now but will do well with two to three more years of cellar aging. The wine fermented with native yeast and saw 80% new French oak. It’s a beauty. 500 cases produced.