Description
Clos Petit-Corbin, Saint-Émilion Grand Cru
I feel compelled to get straight to the point today: Clos Petit-Corbin has quickly become a perennial, blue-chip cellar-stocker around here. Every sip in this Grand Cru bottle communicates a sense of perfectly etched minerality and luxurious, broad-shouldered Right Bank fruit. And why shouldn’t it? This is the arcane second label of Château Haut-Segottes, after all!
Among the Right Bank’s most classic and venerated contemporary estates, Haut-Segottes is where you’ll discover some of the finest pound-for-pound values in Bordeaux, but today’s 2019 release takes it to a whole new level. At just three years old, this small-batch Saint-Émilion Grand Cru is already a plush, terroir-loaded bombshell, so I anticipate that collectors with impatient tendencies will struggle mightily to keep it stocked. This is just the third vintage of Clos Petit-Corbin that’s made it stateside, yet I already count it as one of my all-time favorite values in Saint-Émilion. If you share my obsession with deliciously handmade Grand Cru reds, here’s the $36 Golden Ticket—thankfully, there are more than five to go around!
The contemporary mythology of Bordeaux often focuses on “garagiste” winemakers and/or “vintage(s) of the century.” Still, the more we explore the heavily hyped new wines of Bordeaux, the more we find ourselves returning to the same proven short list of small family properties that have consistently delivered the goods for generations. Danielle Meunier and her tiny Château Haut-Segottes have consistently lurked near the top. Fabled Saint-Émilion Grand Cru real estate, which produces a singular wine of extraordinary quality and unbeatable value—what more could a Bordeaux lover want?
Danielle Meunier works the same modest farmstead her family has owned in Saint-Émilion since the early 1800s. She has a bold and direct manner, and the philosophy behind her property is similarly straightforward. Château Haut-Segottes is essentially a one-woman show with winemaking done in the basement and all grapes grown in the “backyard.” Of course, this is no ordinary backyard—the property is within a designated Grand Cru and its vineyard holdings practically neighbor Château Cheval Blanc.
Danielle’s reds rely on the classic Saint-Émilion Grand Cru appellation marriage of Cabernet Franc and Merlot—except for Clos Petit-Corbin where she channels all of her energy into two single-hectare parcels of Merlot and avoids any new oak during the élevage. Fermentation occurs slowly in steel tanks, followed by 18 patient months of aging in old French barrels (with a small portion remaining in stainless steel) before bottling by hand without filtration. This simple, definitely elegant approach produces wines that faithfully telegraph Bordeaux’s golden age.
Infused with some of the world’s finest Merlot real estate, the excellent aromatics and concentration of a top vintage, and the nuance of a long maturation in neutral French oak, today’s 2019 Clos Petit-Corbin is off-the-charts delicious. All you need to do is decant for 30 minutes, serve in large Bordeaux stems, and enjoy layers of rich red berry fruit (raspberry, cherry, spiced plum, ripe strawberry) that spring from a complex bed of crushed stone, potting soil, bay leaf, clay, and pipe tobacco. As their longtime importer says: “It’s the kind of wine that can only be produced here, and only by growers who are able to fully trust noble Merlot to be its truest self.” Enjoy your bottle over the course of two evenings and stash your others away for consumption through 2027. Cheers!
