Château Saint-André Corbin St Georges St Emilion 1989
With left over pizza I opened from the cellar a ‘pizza’ wine, medium bodied, complex and modest priced for every day sipping. I pulled an aged vintage right bank Bordeaux.
Château Saint André Corbin is one of the "finds" of the Aquitaine Wine Company's Jean-Christophe Calvet, who searches out the petite chateaus of Bordeaux that carry the same qualities found at the larger, more famous estates, but at more modest prices providing high QPR - quality price ratios, especially in better vintage years, when ‘all boats rise with the tide’.
Château Grand Corbin, Grand Cru Classé is in the Saint-George-Saint-Emilion appellation, a lesser ‘satellite’ appellation of the famed Saint-Emilion region of Bordeaux, sitting just to its north, close to the Pomerol appellation.
Château Grand Corbin has 32 acres of vineyards planted on clay-siliceous soils, 68% Merlot and the rest with the two Cabernets, Sauvignon and Franc. Typical of most Right Bank vineyards, Merlot dominates here, but also used is Cabernet Franc, and lesser amounts of Cabernet Sauvignon in the blend.
At thirty-five years this was amazingly resilient, still in its acceptable drinking window and only showing modest signs of diminution from age. The cork was partially saturated but still intact. The fill level was still pristine for its age, still in the mid-neck, reflecting ideal storage conditions in our cellar for tong-term aging. Also, the 1989 vintage in Bordeaux produced high quality long lived wines.
Garnet colored with a slight brownish hue setting in showing its age, medium bodied, complex currant and blackberry fruits are holding on but starting to show a bit of tart acidity, smoke, tobacco and hints of black pepper are starting to give way to notes of herbs, thyme and graphite pencil with pronounced acidity and moderate tannins.
RM 87 points.
