Couvent des Jacobins: Tasting & Drinking
Couvent des Jacobins is one of those châteaux that you only really notice when you have been visiting Bordeaux for some time. The old couvent itself is hidden in plain view on the Rue Guadet, just one more elegant limestone edifice among so many in St Emilion, and in a similar manner the estate is hidden deep among the ranks of the grand cru classé châteaux.
Perhaps in an effort to be noticed the style of wine made here does tend to lean towards the more exuberant and modern, its dark fruit sometimes laced with notes of liquorice and chocolate, and occasionally smothered in toasted-marshmallow oak. This is despite the expressed intentions of Xavier Jean and his team to produce a wine of elegance rather than power.
Nevertheless I feel this is an estate worth getting to know better. This principally because the wines, while undeniably modern, never seem to feel completely overdone, perhaps because they don’t display the aggressive extraction that some modernista estates have chased in recent years. Indeed, as the primary fruit and oak-derived notes fade, the wines develop more appeal. The 2009 vintage, tasted at seven years of age, seemed to be developing nicely, and the 2015 and maybe the 2016 vintage as well hold similar promise. The 2017 feels rather more difficult, frost clearly having had an impact on quality for many châteaux in and around St Emilion in this vintage. A visit to Couvent des Jacobins in 2021 was instructive as it allowed me to see how older vintages performed, with the 2001, 1989 and 1971 all putting on a fine show. More recent vintages show the same or greater promise, with excellent results in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2022 and 2023.
With Xavier Jean and Denis Pomarède continuing to run the show I anticipate good things from this estate in the future. I’m looking forward to finding out whether or not I am right. (15/11/18, updated 7/9/24)
