Saint-Émilion Grand Cru
Saint-Émilion Grand Cru AOC · Bordeaux, France
- 100ml
- £11
- Bottle
- £65
A Coravin draws the wine through the cork under argon without opening the bottle. It lets us pour 100ml of wines we could not otherwise offer by the glass.
- Grape
- Merlot
- Vintage
- 2021
- Region
- Saint-Émilion, Bordeaux
The short version
'Grand Cru' here is not a ranking — it is a stricter appellation, with lower yields and every batch inspected.
Held by eight generations of one family, four of them women in succession, on land traced back to the fourteenth century.
The polished one. Silky, fresh, and from a cold vintage that made Bordeaux classical again.
How it tastes
Aroma & flavour
Sell it with
8oz Fillet, Onion Jam & Herb Salad
Silky rather than gripping tannin, so it suits the leaner, more delicately handled cuts — fillet rather than a heavily crusted ribeye. The tobacco and toasted spice bridge to the char, and Merlot's plummy sweetness meets the onion jam directly.
Where to take them next
The detail — if they ask
Hand-harvested with density sorting, fermented in wood and concrete with gravity working and pigeage, then twelve months in French oak — about a third new. Sandy, clay-free soil, which is why this is the supple, perfumed side of Saint-Émilion rather than the dense limestone-plateau style.
Château Tour de Capet
- Producer
- Ten hectares at Saint-Hippolyte, run by Antoine Moueix Propriétés. The property goes back to fourteenth-century lords and was held by eight generations of the Taillade family — including four women in succession.
- Region
- Saint-Émilion Grand Cru is an appellation, not a ranking: lower yields than plain Saint-Émilion, at least ten months' ageing, and every batch inspected. Tour de Capet sits on sandy, siliceous soil rather than the famous limestone.
- Grapes
- Merlot on sand gives the smooth, round, perfumed side of the Right Bank — charm and freshness rather than density.
2021 was a famously cold, difficult Bordeaux vintage. The upside is fresh, classically styled wine at lower alcohol than the last decade — a winemaker's vintage.