2015 Clos Sainte Anne Premieres Cotes de Bordeaux 750 ml

Bordeaux’s Best-Kept Secret is Out

Today, the Côtes de Bordeaux is a hotbed of discovery, with smaller, lesser-known estates that have been toiled over by true Bordelais families for centuries. It’s our personal favorite source for finding great everyday Bordeaux reds. It’s where we found this 2015 Clos Sainte Anne Premières Côtes de Bordeaux, the latest value stunner from the region’s “strongest vintage” in recent years according to Vinous.

Just south of the famed Left and Right Banks of Bordeaux, east of the Garonne River, lies the Côtes de Bordeaux, a sub-region created in 2009. The area’s patchwork of vineyards with sloping hills, steep terraces, and well-draining gravel, alluvial and clay soils, is more reminiscent of Tuscan vineyard-scapes than Bordeaux’s tightly-planted rows, but the wines speak for themselves.

Today’s 2015 Clos Sainte Anne Premières Côtes de Bordeaux is a stunning, silkend red blend which leverages the Right Bank’s signature grapes—90% Merlot and 10% Cabernet Franc—to produce a silky wine, redolent of plum, black currants, violets, savory spice, and bolstered by refined tannins. 

This special bottle is the result of a Bordeaux adventure, and the two sisters behind the estate. In the 1980s, Francis Courselles (the father of current owners Marie and Sylvie Courselles) acquired the 5-acre plot that would lend its name to this Premières Côtes de Bordeaux. Their family has been making wine “between two seas” in Bordeaux for over 100 years. These sisters, both enologists, are also co-owners of Château Thieuley in Entre-Deux-Mers.

South of Thieuley castle lies the south-facing, terraced clay slopes of Clos Sainte Anne, blanketed in gravel—one of the Côtes de Bordeaux’s best sites. The well-draining soils and the nearby Garonne River create a special microclimate that results in the wine character Bordeaux lovers can’t get enough of—refined black fruits, savory spices, excellent acidity, and age-worthy tannins—and are rare in Bordeaux bottlings under $35.

In the 2015 vintage, the perfect amount of vine stress brought an austere backbone that carries the wine’s bouquet of violets and ripe fruits. With 60 percent aged in barrels, of which 20% is new, the rest rests in tank, preserving the freshness of fruit character. The Courselles are adamant that wood should never hide—only help accentuate—the quality and generous personality of the famous Côtes de Bordeaux blend. In 2015, they succeeded in spades.