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Every year, the Coupe des Crus de Saint-Emilion honours 24 winners.
These men and women work day after day to produce wines that live up to the quality and environmental commitment of Saint-Emilion wines.
Find out more about these properties in Lussac Saint-Emilion, Puisseguin Saint-Emilion, Saint-Emilion and Saint-Emilion Grand Cru, as well as the Grands Crus Classés.
Today, Château Grand Corbin is in the spotlight with a portrait of its Managing Director, Laure CANU.
2024 Favourites – Château Grand Corbin
Château Grand Corbin has been included in the 2022 classification of Saint-Emilion Grand Crus Classés. This is a fine achievement for a property owned by the mutual insurance company SMA BTP, which has entrusted its management to Laure CANU.
A Grand Cru that is still relatively confidential, it won a “Coup de Coeur” at the Coupe des Crus de Saint-Emilion in 2024 for the 2019, 2020 and 2021 vintages.
For some time now, the estate has been opening its doors to the public for visits and events such as afterworks and producers’ markets, which take place throughout the summer.
I’m Managing Director of Château Grand Corbin, which has been classified as a Saint-Emilion Grand Cru Classé since 2022. My job is quite varied: I’ll be able to follow and support the team on technical missions and with our oenologist, but I’ll also be involved in sales and marketing tasks and, of course, management and administration.
For me, Château Grand Corbin is first and foremost an elegant wine thanks to its location and terroir, one of the finest in the world. It’s also about the deliciousness that comes from Merlot, the king of grape varieties in our appellation, but Grand Corbin is also about conviviality. At the estate, we love to welcome and share with the public during our visits and events.
Like many Saint-Emilion properties, Château Grand Corbin has a century-long history. Today, however, the property is owned by the French group SMA BTP, a mutual insurance company, which acquired it in the 1980s. The group has a very long-term vision for the estate, and has built up a fine team that works to deliver a quality wine.
We decided to open the Château to the public 3 years ago. It’s a very charming property, an extremely rural setting, surrounded by beautiful woodland with lots of space, gardens and rivers, which provides a very beautiful setting for the public who come to visit or stay at the property, as we’ve opened a few bedrooms.
One of the special features of the estate is its northerly exposure, which gives us a very special terroir with blue clays and an exposure that allows us to grow Merlot. This grape variety is known for its sweetness, but with this terroir, it retains a lovely freshness, acidity and liveliness.
Château Grand Corbin obviously has great ageing potential. You can keep it in your cellar for 15 or 20 years, but you can also enjoy it much younger, as it is an extremely gourmet wine that can be enjoyed from the 3rd year onwards with any type of dish, and of course with French cuisine to delight your taste buds.
We are fortunate enough to be able to regularly taste boards of charcuterie and cheese with a glass of Grand Corbin, which we also offer to the public who come to visit the estate. As a food and wine pairing with more mature vintages, I would also recommend a truffle risotto or any other highly aromatic dish.
We actually discovered the Coupe des Crus de Saint-Emilion by chance and it caught our attention. It was an opportunity for us to challenge ourselves against other wines from our Saint-Emilion Grand Cru appellation. So we’re all the more delighted to have won a Coup de Coeur, given that it’s our first time taking part!
It’s obviously a great source of pride for us to win our first Coupe des Crus de Saint-Emilion. We’re proud that a panel of enlightened wine-lovers has appreciated our wine, and it also highlights the work of the teams who have been involved for a very long time in making this wine, which is still fairly confidential and not very well known by the general public. So this was our chance to shine a little!
It will be a pleasure to meet you again at Grand Corbin, either for a traditional visit to our gardens or our Château, or perhaps at one of the afterworks or farmers’ markets that we organise at the estate throughout the summer, in July and August. See you soon at Grand Corbin!
