At the start of this year, I purchased Ukkiuki-san’s affordable wine lucky bags priced at 10,000 and 15,000 yen for red and white sets. Perhaps reflecting the recent weak yen and soaring prices of French domaines, the lineup was mostly composed of popular, entry-level Italian and Spanish brands—not very exciting. In every lucky bag, however, there was one standout bottle—or rather, this particular label appeared twice.
Château Cap de Faugères is produced from contiguous vineyards next to the well-established Grand Cru Château Faugères in Saint-Émilion, specifically in the Côtes de Castillon appellation. This special, top-tier cuvée, “La Mourelle,” comes from a carefully selected 4-hectare parcel within a 20-hectare estate. Made from old vines planted on clay-limestone slopes, the grapes undergo barrel fermentation and 14 months aging in oak barrels with no fining or filtration. Almost all production goes straight to the U.S. market, where the local retail price is about 10,000 yen. Because this cuvée was crafted so lavishly, only three vintages—2014, 2015, and 2016—were ever made, making it a rare, almost phantom cuvée.
Unsurprisingly, this wine is priced around 5,000 yen on Rakuten. From a value perspective, even if the other bottles in the lucky bag are around 1,000 to 2,000 yen each, just having one bottle of this label more than compensates. But...
For me personally, this wine was a total disappointment. First off, I don’t seek out Bordeaux wines with a hefty 15% alcohol. The combination of high alcohol and intensely concentrated fruit flavor, alongside modern oak treatment and softened tannins, strikes me as trying too hard to appear premium—it feels overwhelmingly forceful. This style is common among Italian and Spanish wines often found in “high-scoring wine magazine sets.”