Château Corbin

The estate

Corbin is an old name and a crowded one. Charles Cocks and Édouard Féret, whose Bordeaux et ses vins was the reference book of the Bordeaux trade, reprinted a Saint-Émilion list of 1841 with a Corbin under Chaperon aîné at 50 tonneaux (the old Bordeaux measure of a crop, 900 liters, or 4 barrels), and in 1868 engraved Château Corbin et Jean Faure, standing beside Cheval Blanc in the country between Pomerol and Saint-Émilion. By 1893 their book carried 6 Corbins across 2 communes, among them Corbin-Michotte and Grand-Corbin et Boisredon, and in 1897 Féret made Chaperon’s the first growth of the gravel, still at 50 tonneaux. The site goes back further, to the 15th century, with remains of the 16th and a neoclassical château of the 18th.

The family has held Corbin since 1924, handed from generation to generation through its daughters. Anabelle Cruse Bardinet, the 4th generation and a trained oenologist, has run the estate since 1999 and has owned it since 2007. Corbin was in the first classification, of 1955, and the list approved in September 2022 confirms it among the 71 Grands Crus Classés. The vines are worked without weedkillers, and the estate has held Haute Valeur Environnementale (High Environmental Value, the French state’s environmental certification for farms) and ISO 14001 since 2017, the year frost took the crop: there was no Château Corbin in 2017.

The vineyard lies in the northwest of the appellation, close enough to Pomerol to have 2 grounds: ancient sand around the château over a clay subsoil rich in iron, and clay on the Pomerol side. It is 13 hectares in a single block, 75,000 vines 30 years old on average, carried at 6 to 8 bunches a vine and planted 80% Merlot and 20% Cabernet Franc. Divin de Corbin, the second wine, has been made as AOC Saint-Émilion rather than Grand Cru since the 2000 vintage; XX de Corbin is a further label.

At a glance

Appellation

Saint-Émilion Grand Cru

Commune

Saint-Émilion, on the Corbin plateau, at the Pomerol boundary

Classification

Grand Cru Classé in 2022; in the first list of 1955

Owner

Anabelle Cruse Bardinet, 4th generation of the family that has held Corbin since 1924

Direction

Anabelle Cruse Bardinet, oenologist, since 1999

Vineyard

13 hectares in a single block; 75,000 vines, 30 years old on average

Ground

Ancient sand over clay rich in iron; clay on the Pomerol side

Grapes

Merlot 80%, Cabernet Franc 20%

Farming

No weedkillers; Haute Valeur Environnementale and ISO 14001 since 2017

Wines

Château Corbin; Divin de Corbin; XX de Corbin

In history

A Corbin under Chaperon at 50 tonneaux in 1841; 6 Corbins across 2 communes by 1893

Sources: Château Corbin, terroir and savoir faire · Château Corbin, the château · Château Corbin, the wines · Conseil des Vins de Saint-Émilion, Corbin · INAO, Saint-Émilion grand cru: the classification for the next decade · Decanter, tasting Château Corbin