Cabernet Franc, Merlot

Food pairings: Beef tenderloin with a mushroom sauce, grilled red meats, roasted venison, braised lamb shoulder and hearty beef stews.

Winemaking: The grapes are picked by hand into small crates and sorted on arrival. Fermentation takes place in cement vats with a long, gentle maceration of about three weeks, using small, split pump-overs and watering the cap by hand. The wine is pressed in a traditional vertical basket press, with the press wine selected separately, and goes through malolactic fermentation in vat. The lots are aged separately in French oak barrels until the final blend and the wine is bottled at the château. Although Merlot is the main grape planted, the Grand Cru is usually built around Cabernet Franc, which gives this wine its structure and long life.

Vineyards and terroir: About twenty plots, with vines around 40 years old on average, lie among some of the greatest names of the appellation, including parcels in the Fortin lieu-dit across from Château La Dominique and close to Cheval Blanc, in Chauvin and on the Plateau de Corbin. The soils run from sandy loam to clay over a sandy-clay subsoil rich in iron. The vines are farmed without weedkillers, with ploughing and soil aeration from spring to autumn, de-budding, leaf thinning and green harvesting, and the picking is timed to each plot's ripeness.

Family and history: Four generations of the same family have run Haut-Segottes since the mid-1800s, and its wines were already winning gold medals at the Concours Agricole in Paris by 1912. The estate began bottling its own wine in earnest in 1959. Danielle Meunier, who grew up working in the vines, took over in 1972, when few women ran wineries, and still leads the estate today with a small, devoted team. She plans the work around the weather and the moon, and swallows have nested at the château for many years.

In the pictures: Vineyard landscape in the Saint-Émilion appellation in autumn light (photo: Lauchantoiseau, 2016, CC BY-SA 4.0). Vines below the medieval town of Saint-Émilion and its bell tower (photo: Adam Baker, 2008, CC BY 2.0).