The jury is out on this wine from St. Emilion, whether to drink or hold. If you're looking for a Merlot dominant wine, look no further than this blend of 90% with added 10% Cabernet France for structure and concentration. As one would expect, it's soft and fleshy with plum and blackberry fruits, laced with clove, walnut, and black tea. This will still evolve over time but can be enjoyed now.

Chateau Canon-la-Gaffeliere is a Premier Grand Cru Classe, located in the St. Emilion appellation on the right bank of Bordeaux. Owned by the von Neipperg family, there are links to viticulture here since the 13th century. Canon -la-Gaffeliere is one of only two Bordeaux properties that is Certified Organic. The 2014 is a red blend of 55% Merlot, 37% Cabernet Franc and 8% Cabernet Sauvignon with notes of preserved blackberry, fig and black currant. The palate is medium-bodied with good structure and a spicy finish.

93-96 points -Wine Spectator "This is packed with fig, boysenberry and raspberry fruit flavors that keep cascading over one another while enticing anise and plum cake notes fill in throughout. Gorgeous mouthfeel, with a creamy, rounded edge, yet never giving up a generally racy and focused feel. (JM)" (4/2017)

Couvent des Jacobins 2016 develops blackberry and spicy aromas. On the palate, the wine is medium-bodied with grainy tannins and fresh acidity. The finish reveals a beautiful structure.

Jane Anson 96 Points for Inside Bordeaux: "The 2016 Fleur Cardinale is a muscular, beautiful and profound wine full of olive tapendade, tar, smoked earth, and tons of liquorice, bitter chocolate shavings, cassis and blueberry fruits. Things close in to a slate textured finish that gives balance and makes your mouth water, and as things open you get clearer peony floral aromatics curling out of the glass. This was the point at which the Decoster family were really making me sit up and take notice of what was happening at Fleur Cardinale, and it is starting to sing as five years old." (11/2021)

98 points -Robert Parker's Wine Advocate "Deep purple-black colored, the 2016 Pavie Decesse bursts boldly out of the glass with confident blackcurrant preserves, baked blackberries, baked plums and sandalwood notes with touches of Indian spices, mocha and lilacs plus touches of cedar chest and pencil lead. Big, concentrated and voluptuously fruited in the mouth, it has a truly impressive structure of very firm, finely grained tannins and racy freshness lifting all that densely packed fruit to a very long, multilayered finish. Wow! (LPB)" (3/2019)

99 points - James Suckling

94 points - Wine Spectator

Deeply colored, this powerful, dense, rich and intense wine combines concentration and mouth-coating levels of fruit and acidity with ripe, dark red fruits and citrus in the endnote. The wine was made from a blend of 85% Merlot and 15% Cabernet Franc, reaching 15.5% with a pH of 3.3. aging in 60% new French oak barrels