Like many English speakers (and not “Anglo-Saxons”, please, as the French often refer to us…) I started out with a much better grounding in Bordeaux wines from the Left Bank than the Right. Other than more limited availability of wines from the Libournais due to estates with a smaller production than in the Médoc, another reason for this is the changing nature of the Saint-Emilion classification, revised every ten years. This means you have to stay on your toes to keep up with things and familiarize yourself with the newcomers.
One of sixteen such newcomers in the 2022 classification is Clos Dubreuil, a wine I had never heard of, much less tasted… I recently wrote and asked to visit, going on to receive a very warm welcome from David Eads and his wife Anneliese this summer. David is the scion of a fifth-generation Texas family involved in the oil industry. The family’s connection with wine is not new since David’s grandmother was the first women to import French wine into Texas, and David has experience as a sommelier and in restaurant management.
I refer to Clos Dubreuil as a success story because it involves so much more than investing in a famous property with an established reputation and a ready market. No, David’s parents, Ralph and Lisa, built something almost from the ground up, acquiring a tiny 1.5 hectare vineyard in 2006, expanding it to 9.1 hectares (7.5 red wine grapes, 1.6 white wine grapes), and achieving cru classé status in 2022 – an impressive accomplishment.
Clos Dubreuil was originally just a tiny plot with an extremely low profile. The Eads family built a new winery as well as acquiring and completely renovating adjoining outbuildings to form a sort of picture-perfect self-contained hamlet featuring six luxury bedrooms available for privatization and a cosy, elegant wine bar. Wine tourism is a major part of the estate’s new orientation. The setting is absolutely bucolic with the steeple of the church in Saint-Christophe-des-Bardes in the distance. The link with the town is perpetuated in the Clos Dubreuil label, with a stylized depiction of Saint Christopher.
On to the wines.
Sold as Vin de France, the 2021 Chardonnay, obviously a rarity in Saint Emilion, is a fragrant well-balanced wine with good acidity, the antithesis of a big California varietal. The 2015 Clos Dubreuil grand vin has a complex bouquet showing delightful tertiary development with musky, minty, meaty overtones, as well as a wonderful long rich aftertaste. I have a bottle of the 2016 Clos Dubreuil in the callar and look forward to drinking this in another five years of so.