Couvent des Jacobins in Saint Emilion may not be well known but it was certainly one of the highlights of our trip. The energetic owner Xavier Jean showed us around the historic estate where monks made wines for hundreds of years before private family ownership from the 19th century. It has stayed in his family for four generations. The large underground cellars 12 meters below the ground was a revelation - the family has meticulously kept libraries of old vintages from the 1940s where old wines are periodically and laboriously recorked. Xavier hosted us to dinner afterwards and took us through “year of the pig” vintages, 1947, 1971, 1983, 1995 and 2018. The 1947 was an amazing experience. It looked and tasted much younger than its 72 years, attesting to the quality of the wine and the vintage. The wine had ruby colour, gentle tannins but still lively fruit and lots of interesting secondary and tertiary flavors.
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3/25/2019 - SGoenophile Likes this wine: 94 Points
Couvent des Jacobins in Saint Emilion may not be well known but it was certainly one of the highlights of our trip. The energetic owner Xavier Jean showed us around the historic estate where monks made wines for hundreds of years before private family ownership from the 19th century. It has stayed in his family for four generations. The large underground cellars 12 meters below the ground was a revelation - the family has meticulously kept libraries of old vintages from the 1940s where old wines are periodically and laboriously recorked. Xavier hosted us to dinner afterwards and took us through “year of the pig” vintages, 1947, 1971, 1983, 1995 and 2018. The 1947 was an amazing experience. It looked and tasted much younger than its 72 years, attesting to the quality of the wine and the vintage. The wine had ruby colour, gentle tannins but still lively fruit and lots of interesting secondary and tertiary flavors.
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