96 pts - Wine Advocate
A powerful wine that bears the stamp of the vintage, the 2015 Cabernet Sauvignon offers up aromas of minty crème de cassis, blackberries, dark chocolate and spice, framed by a lavish application of toasty new oak. On the palate, the wine is full-bodied, ample and heady, with a generous core of ripe, liqueur-like fruit, a fine-grained chassis of tannins and a long, heavily oak-inflected finish. To hold the estate to its own high standards, after the more elegant and complete 2014, the 2015 vintage of Quilceda's flagship bottling feels a bit more overtly high-octane and marked by its time in new wood, and I don't think it will ever be as graceful. But it's a lusty, expressive Cabernet Sauvignon that will drink well for a decade or more.- William Kelley (06/2018)
96 pts - Vinous
(72% of this wine came from Champoux vineyard): Dark red-ruby. Pungent aromas of ripe dark berries, licorice and cedary oak. Wonderfully suave and fine-grained, boasting terrific concentration, intensity and energy to its dark berry and African violet flavors. This very suave Cabernet finishes with terrific cocoa-powder length and substantial but refined mounting tannins. Paul Golitzin told me that he always aims to get two tons of fruit per acre--"either by nature or through crop thinning." And he noted that his family now has full viticultural control over all of their properties. (15.2% on label, like all of the Quilceda Creek '15s)- Stephen Tanzer (11/2018)