The Couvent des Jacobins is an integral producer in Saint Emilion’s wine history. It’s not very often you get to taste a vertical going back half a century, but while in Bordeaux recently I was lucky enough to do an excellent vertical at one of the region’s most important historical producers that has been at the heart of Saint Emilion terroir since the Middle Ages. Nestled in the middle of the UNESCO heritage village of Saint Emilion, the Couvent has been producing wine since the 1300s, having been originally owned and run by Christian monks (the Jacobin Brothers).
In the 1700s the property was entrusted to two local families, and in 1909 the property was purchased by 1902, Jean Jean, also known as ‘gentile Jean’, for 10,000 French gold francs. Today Xavier Jean, the great-great-grandson of Jean Jean runs the historical winery and it felt like the perfect opportunity to grill Xavier on the history and identity of Saint Emilion wines:
Couvent des Jacobins Gran Cru Classe vertical wine tasting
Here are my tasting notes from the vertical tasting through the last seven decades with winemaker Denis Pomarede.
Couvent des Jacobins 1953
A year of very low production, this was 75% Merlot and 25% Cabernet Franc. The wine is a crimson, burnt ruby in colour. It is very savoury on the nose with cedar notes, tea leaves, boldo, liquorice, shiitake mushroom and some warm star anise notes. In the mouth, this wine has a surprising freshness, with some structure in the mouth but the tannins are fine-laced and it has great elegance. A long and rolling finish with fine spice that lingers.
Couvent des Jacobins 1964
This vintage was a drier year with more sunshine. The blend is similar but it shows much darker notes with aromas of fine cigar, graphite and a trace of fruit faintly lingering but this is very much a savoury wine. Spicy tannins with a real freshness to the finish, which reveals some soft fruit notes.
Couvent des Jacobins 1975
This vintage is around the time winemaker Denis suggests the Bordelaise were working on winemaking techniques, perhaps leading to more extraction, making it more tannic. There are notes of gunflint and some mushroomy aromas with an almost medicinal edge. On the palate, there are spiky tannins which dominate, but there is also a freshness. It isn’t as expressive as the older vintages though and has become a little hollow over the years.
Couvent des Jacobins 1982
The 1982 vintage was one of the standout vintages in Bordeaux because it was much warmer and this wine instantly reveals fruit on the nose (the first of the line up). However, there are also much more Cabernet-driven notes of roasted bell pepper and some toast suggesting a newer oak influence in the wine. This wine also has some freshness but it shows complexity, ripe fruit notes and a different winemaking technique. This was the era when we started to see the flying winemaker Michel Rolland and his trademark style emerge in Bordeaux, explained Denis.
Couvent des Jacobins 1998
This was a more Merlot-dominant vintage with 22% Cabernet Franc and about a third of it went into barrels. The nose shows ripe notes of mulberry and it also has some floral aromas, sweet oriental spices of clove and anise, and a nice freshness to the finish. It is an elegant and very complete wine with ripeness but also nuance. Delicious and showing beautifully today.
Couvent des Jacobins 2006
This wine has 85% Merlot with much more plushness of fruit, despite being a wetter vintage. Denis feels the fruit is just emerging now, and it wasn’t until after a decade in the bottle that the wine began opening up. This wine is framed in fine-grained tannin and has freshness and tension. Denis describes this as a surprising vintage that took time to reveal itself, and undoubtedly with some more time in the bottle it will reveal more about its character.
Interview transcript: Saint Emilion terroir and history with Couvent des Jacobins
Xavier, can you tell me a bit about Saint Emilion terroir and what makes it a different appellation for Bordeaux?
Well, the history first. We’ve been making wine since the Romans, so quite a long history – 1,500 plus years of winemaking. So that’s already a big difference with some of the other, maybe Newer World regions globally, the other one is the diversity of the terroirs. As you may know in Saint Emilion, we have a blend of plateau, we have a blend of slope, we have a blend of plane. Each of them typically have multiple different types of soils, so when you have limestone then you are going to have a completely different wine to when you have sand, for example.
So, let’s talk about the different Saint Emilion terroir and soils. You have the plateau, where you have some vineyards, what is the plateau and how does that impact the wine?
Sure. So the plateau is effectively a hill that’s made of limestone, that has a little bit of soil on top of it. So depending on where you are in the plateau, you have more or less soil. But the bottom line is the plateau has tens of metres of limestone, as its own soil. If you are very, very close to the valley you probably will have 30cm of clay, then if you are a bit further you’ll have a metre and a half of clay but once the roots go down below a metre and a half then they don’t have any more space and then they just run through the rock, which is giving all this minerality taste and this freshness that you see in a lot of Saint Emilion wines that do have holdings on the plateau. And then as you go down on the planes, the wines will tend to be a little more fine and a little less rich, a little less muscular as you would have on the plateau.
Excellent, and then your own winery – we’re in the middle of the town of Saint Emilion, which is quite unique here – can you tell us a little bit about how the wineries and the vineyards are formed in the area, and why we are sat here in the middle of Saint Emilion?
Sure, so Saint Emilion is a little bit unique in Bordeaux and globally for very small-sized estates, a little bit like in Burgundy if I have to draw a parallel. The average size of the areas in Saint Emilion is probably around five to ten hectares, whereas it can be multiple times bigger in Napa Valley, or elsewhere globally or even in Bordeaux on the Left Bank.So there’s a lot of family holders that have been in Saint Emilion for hundreds of years and through the transmission, the different children, usually they’ve got one plot of land and they’ve perpetuated this kind of diversity. So that makes the region quite unique, because you have as many types of wines as you have effectively families or wine growers.
The Couvant des Jacobins is one of the rare estates within the centre of the village. That’s actually because the monks, back in the days – the 1300s, were given these big plots of land where they established their convent, where they established their church. And they are lucky, they were actually harvesting outside of the walls of the city, so some of the plots we are harvesting today, they were actually harvested in the 1400s and 1300s too. So that’s where the origin of Couvant des Jacobins is coming from.
Fabulous, and then obviously we are here on the Right Bank, which means we are more Merlot and Cabernet Franc dominant. Can you explain to us the difference between the profile of Saint Emilion, and the Right Bank compared to the Left Bank, and then give us some difference between Saint Emilion and the other Right Bank appellations in terms of the profile and the way you would taste it inside the glass?
Sure. So the first difference is, as you can see, today there’s a bit of humidity going on in Saint Emilion. So Saint Emilion tends to have soils that tend to be a bit more humid. First of all, they are a bit further from the river then on the left side. And the soil is also slightly different. It’s not conducive of heat, and on the left side you tend to have gravels that during the summer absorb the heat, and then during the night of the summer the heat kind of goes back into the foliage, into the leaves and into the grapes. So the maturity level and the ripeness level in the Left Bank is generally quicker than on the right side. And what that means is that the left side tends to use grape varieties that need a lot of warmth in order to grow, like Cabernet for example. So in Saint Emilion, the typical blend is going to be 75% to 85% Merlot because our soils are more humid, and the rest generally Cabernet Franc. So the wine styles tend to be quite different. Merlot gives maybe more fruit, more roundness, more suppleness. Cabernet gives a bit more structure. And that’s why you have Left Bank wines that tend to be more muscular, a bit more strong, a bit more backbone, a bit more spicy, a bit more Cabernet-like. Whereas in the Right Bank they tend to be a bit more approachable in their youth, maybe more fruity and more round.
Excellent. And comparing Saint Emilion to other Right Bank appellations?
So you have a big amount of diversity within Saint Emilion as I was mentioning. So Pomerol is quite close in terms of the grape varieties that we have. They have one big plateau which tends to be mostly Merlot, and a little bit of Cabernet Franc in pockets here and there. So there tends to be a similarity with Pomerol. And then if you go to Lalande-de-Pomerol or the other appellations in Entre-Deux-Mers and so on they tend to be bigger estates with generally much larger units, and there is probably a little less soil diversity there. Whereas in Saint Emilion, you probably have thousands of different wines on the other side the estates tend to be a bit bigger and the weather tends to be a little bit more complicated also sometimes.
We’ve just done a tasting back down to the 50s, which I would say is still very fresh and vibrant wines, why is it that Saint Emilion being a ‘softer’ appellation than the Left Bank, why is it that it has this great ageability?
Well, a lot of it is down to the terroir. So if you have a good terroir, a good soil, and I would say if you have passionate winemakers that are trying to do as good a product as they can, then it will translate into the wine. It’s always easier to have a wine that has good ageing potential if you have a good raw material, if you have good grapes and if you have a good soil. That’s not the only thing, but that’s already a critical aspect of it. And in Saint Emilion you have different terroirs but they tend to be on average be very good, they tend to be very good for winegrowing, they tend to bring a lot of flavours to the different wines and vintages. And in Couvant des Jacobins we have a plot on that plateau that is giving all this energy, and all this youth and this minerality, and so on. And that’s probably one of the reasons why our wines can age very well. Like all the other estates on the plateau.
Fantastic, and you’ve added Petit Verdot into your blend. Can you explain why you started planting Petit Verdot and how you see it, not only on your estate, but in Saint Emilion how that attitude is changing?
There’s actually two reasons. One is, you have to project yourself 10, 20, 30 years away from today. And the climate is changing, I think nobody is denying this in a wild manner anymore. And as weather patterns are changing, you need to adapt the grape varieties that you have. To the climate. So Merlot is still a predominant grape variety in Saint Emilion but you are actually seeing more people planting Petit Verdot and Cabernet Franc. Cabernet because they need heat and a bit more warmth, Petit Verdot because in our case we had identified a small plot of vines that was fairly well preserved from the wind, fairly well preserved from the heat, fairly well preserved from the water and the flooding, and all these things – very well drained. And we just gave it a shot. The soil quality was pretty good, and for three vintages what we feel it’s adding to us is a bit more density in the wines, and an identity that you can start finding from vintage to vintage. In Saint Emilion, Petit Verdot is still pretty tiny, but I think if you grow it well people will understand that it can contribute a lot to the wine quality, and standing and identity. And it can compliment very well the Merlot and the Cabernet [Franc]. Which each of the grape varieties is adding its own, its own identity and its own pace within the blend.
And my last question is also to do with another innovation of yours here within Saint Emilion. You’ve moved to an organic estate and producer in the winery, how do you see the future of the region in terms of organic production?
I think the trend has been kicked already, I think about 10 years ago, it’s actually accelerating. I think with scientific progress, every single vine grower is getting better at understanding what organic entails so it’s not a scary word anymore. And what we are observing is that people are trying to make the effort to convert to organic. Whether it’s a classic estate like ourselves or some others, or whether it’s a château with a much smaller size and a more family-orientation, it’s – I would say – it’s a critical step forward and there’s a lot more awareness. Within Saint Emilion and within Bordeaux. In order to satisfy this important environmental challenge.
Excellent. And with that, we’ll leave with the rain… Thank you!
