Château Grand Corbin

The château

Corbin is a place before it is a château: the name has marked this corner of Saint-Émilion, on the border with Pomerol, since the Middle Ages, when an Arnaud de Corbin appears in the records under the English. The old trade books are full of Corbins. Charles Cocks and Édouard Féret, in Bordeaux and its Wines, the English edition of their guide, in 1883, already had a Grand-Corbin under Nelson Cazeaux, and by 1922 Grand-Corbin et Boisredon was making 50 tonneaux (the old Bordeaux measure of a crop, 900 liters, or 4 barrels). The present house went up in the middle of the 19th century, when the estate belonged to Guillaume Ignace Bouchereau, a lawyer turned judge who was made baron de Saint-Georges.

The estate of today is an assembly. The insurer SMA bought Château Haut Corbin in 1986, then on December 31, 2010 the 15 hectares of Château Grand Corbin, held for 50 years by the Giraud family, and 4 hectares of Château Le Jurat; in 2012 the INAO allowed the 3 to be run under the single name of Grand Corbin. Its relationship with the classification has been restless: out in 1996, on the list of 2006 that the courts annulled, and back as a Grand Cru Classé in 2012, a rank the list of 2022 confirmed. Laure Canu has run it since 2021, as she runs Château Cantemerle in the Haut-Médoc, and Axel Marchal has advised on the wine since the 2022 vintage.

The 37 hectares lie in one piece on siliceous sand over blue clay, 28.5 of them classified, planted 80% Merlot, 16% Cabernet Franc and 4% Cabernet Sauvignon; the grapes are picked by hand, sorted 2 times and moved by gravity, and the wine spends 12 months in French oak, 40% new. This is the side of Saint-Émilion where the wines turn broader and more open than on the limestone core, and Grand Corbin shows it well. In the 2020, which I tasted in March 2026, the ripeness is there but never in charge, held in place by a steady, grounded structure.

At a glance

Appellation

Saint-Émilion Grand Cru

Commune

Saint-Émilion, the northwest, on the border with Pomerol

Classification

Grand Cru Classé, 2012 and 2022; out in 1996

Owner

Groupe SMA, at Corbin since 1986

Direction

Laure Canu, since 2021

Consultant

Axel Marchal, since the 2022 vintage

Vineyard

37 hectares in one piece, 28.5 of them classified

Soil

Siliceous sand over blue clay Terroir of Saint-Émilion →

Grapes

Merlot 80%, Cabernet Franc 16%, Cabernet Sauvignon 4%

Cellar

Picked by hand; sorted 2 times; gravity; 12 months in French oak, 40% new

Wines

Château Grand Corbin; Les Charmes de Grand Corbin; Nuances de Grand Corbin, rosé and white

Took in

Château Haut-Corbin