Stunning St Emilion Steal on the Pomerol Border.
For $47.97 a Bottle.

Dear Artisans,

Every so often a bottle lands on our shelf that reads like a magazine feature. This is one of them. A Grand Cru Classe Saint-Emilion from the Pomerol border, from an estate that Decanter's Elin McCoy just called "an intimate jewel of St-Emilion," in a vintage the Right Bank considers generational.

Eight major critics scored the 2019 Corbin between 92 and 94 points. The lowest asking price anywhere in California is $70. Ours is $47.97.

Look Who Corbin Sits Next To.

On the Pomerol border, minutes from Cheval Blanc, Petrus, and Figeac. Same clay subsoil. Same appellation. Same 2019 vintage.

An Intimate Jewel of St-Emilion.

Down a quiet road in St-Emilion, two tall stone pillars mark the entrance. A gravel drive lined with horse-chestnut trees leads to an iron gate, and beyond it, a white-shuttered 18th-century chateau of cream-coloured stone with a romantic tower. This is Chateau Corbin.

Unlike the Left Bank's grand imposing chateaux with shiny new chais designed by celebrity architects, Corbin feels intimate, charming, jewel-like. You fantasise about living there. And it has a tradition of being run by talented women.

The current custodian is Anabelle Cruse-Bardinet — fourth generation of the Cruse family (major players in the Bordeaux trade for seven generations) — who took over in 1999 and famously did that year's harvest with a baby in her arms. Since then she has done nothing less than transform the estate: new drainage, new rootstocks, a plot-by-plot vat room, and after a devastating 2017 frost that killed the entire crop, a complete style revolution.

Her mission, from day one: elegance, purity, and the terroir of Corbin. After the 2017 reset, she began picking earlier plot by plot, dropped to 50% new oak, adopted infusion over pump-overs, and began experimenting with glass wine globes for ageing the Cabernet Franc. The 2019 you are looking at is the first fully-realised vintage of that new philosophy — and the critics agree it may be the greatest Corbin ever bottled.

If 2019 is the modern benchmark, 2016 is the classic one — the vintage that critics still hold up as the reference point for cool-climate Right Bank Bordeaux. Anabelle Cruse-Bardinet has said the 2016 was the first vintage produced in her brand-new plot-by-plot vat room. Now nine years in bottle, the tannins are integrating and the primary fruit is giving way to the secondary complexity — leather, cedar, dried flowers — that great Bordeaux is prized for. Almost impossible to find on the open market at any price. Ours at $64.97, with 35 bottles remaining.

Two Grand Cru Classe Vintages
at the Price of a Village-Level Burgundy.

The 2019 Corbin at $47.97 makes no mathematical sense — and the lowest asking price anywhere else in California is $70. The 2016 at $64.97 is a bottle that will be gone from the open market within a year or two at any price. Between them, sixty-five bottles.

If you have ever wanted to lay in a case of Right Bank Bordeaux from a Grand Cru Classe estate that Decanter calls "an intimate jewel of St-Emilion," this is your moment.

Cheers,

— James Tran