Chateau La Serre in Decanter’s 20 Saint-Emilion Grand Crus to watch

Jane Anson of Decanter identifies 10 estates in Saint-Emilion to watch.  Anson stateS:

Classified since 1955
I have long loved this wine. It manages to be under the radar despite its brilliant location – slap-bang on 7ha of prime limestone plateau real estate, up at around 90m altitude, with soils that are covered with a shallow layer of clay that differs from 30cm to 1m before hitting the limestone bedrock. It is also hugely consistent, approaching its terroir with care and attention, never shouting too loudly, yet delivering delicious, sappy and fruit-filled wines made from a (usual) blend of 80% Merlot and 20% Cabernet Franc.

And the team here stand by what they produce. They have the possibility of making a second wine, Les Menuts de la Serre, but it only gets made once in a blue moon (maybe three times in the past 25 years). ‘I can’t remember the last time we made the second wine,’ owner Luc d’Arfeuille, who runs the property with his nephew Arnaud, says cheerfully. ‘Up here on the plateau we have brilliant ventilation, which helps deal with most weather conditions. So even in 2018 we didn’t suffer from any mildew because the north wind always flows across the vines’.

There are signs that this most old-school of estates is on the move. Density of planting has risen over the past five years; from 6,000 to 7,200 vines per hectare, and a new winery was ready for the 2018 harvest, allowing more plot-by-plot vinification in smaller-sized vats, with more precise, softer extractions. No sulphur dioxide is added until bottling, and new oak is kept to about 50%.