2022 Château Pontet-Canet, Pauillac, Bordeaux
Critics reviews
The 2022 Pontet Canet has a pure nose with perfumed blackberry and cassis fruit. It takes time to cohere, evolving light pencil lead notes after 8-10 minutes. The palate has a lovely chalky texture on the entry and a silver bead of acidity. Perhaps, more complexity than the aromatics suggest at the moment.
Fine balance, moderate grip, the mineralité coming toward the final third, it fans out with gusto. There is quite a long residual peppery note on the aftertaste that you can feel after 30 seconds. I had not pulled any punches in recent vintages when stylistically, I thought it had veered too far away from Pauillac for my personal taste. But closely examining this 2022, today, it seems safely within the appellation.
Drink 2028 - 2050
Neal Martin, Vinous.com (April 2023)
The 2022 Pontet-Canet is a surprising wine. Usually much more opulent, especially in warm, dry years, the 2022 comes across as restrained and understated. It is a wine of linear intensity rather than size, marked by notable freshness and a feeling of tension and precision I don’t recall seeing in the past. Clean mineral notes extend the finish effortlessly. I very much admire the precision and vibrancy here. Unforgettable.
Drink 2028 - 2042
Antonio Galloni, Vinous.com (April 2023)
The 2022 Pontet-Canet is a blend of 57% Cabernet Sauvignon, 35% Merlot, 4% Cabernet Franc, and 4% Petit Verdot, ageing 50% in new oak barrels, 35% in amphoras, and 15% in used barrels. Deep garnet-purple in colour, it needs considerable swirling and coaxing to reveal aromas of damp earth, fragrant soil, crushed rocks, and underbrush, giving way to a profound core of blackcurrant cordial, juicy black plums, and fresh blackberries.
The full-bodied palate is laden with nuanced black fruits, slowly releasing earthy and mineral-laced flavours, framed by firm, ripe, grainy tannins and seamless freshness, finishing on a lingering fragrant earth note. Talk about tasting the place! This is Pauillac in all its powerful, energetic glory.
Drink 2030 - 2060
Lisa Perrotti-Brown MW, The Wine Independent (May 2023)
Vivid plum colour, violet reflections, and chewy tannins from the first moments. Loaded with cassis, blueberry and fresh fig fruits, laced with rosemary, sage, dried herbs, edges of chamomile and fresh mushroom. Tight in its tannic structure, with smoked earth, cinnamon, cardamom and lavender.
Mathieu Bessonnet, technical director, and the 47th vintage of owner Alfred Tesseron, 50% new oak, 35% amphora, 15% one-year-old barrels, 55-year average age of the vines.
Harvest September 8 to 28, with clay used as sunscreen on the grapes to avoid sunburn, and a selection before harvest to drop any shrivelled berries.
Drink 2030 - 2047
Jane Anson, JaneAnson.com (May 2023)
57% Cabernet Sauvignon, 35% Merlot, 4% Petit Verdot, 4% Cabernet Franc. Cask sample. Deep crimson to the rim. Subtle, scented nose. Crunchy tannins but wrapped in generous fruit.
Concentrated, punchy, powerful, but refined tannins. Tight, firm finish. Bit of a glow but enough freshness to provide balance. Needs to gel but has clear potential.
Drink 2032 - 2048
Jancis Robinson MW, JancisRobinson.com (May 2023)
What a finish on this Pontet-Canet. So much energy and brightness. It's full-bodied yet so tight and focused with superb fruit and transparency. It is racy and delicate with a super fine texture. It's like crushed cabernet sauvignon with cassis, tobacco and a cigar box. Liquorice and spices. Freshness of the seed.
57% cabernet sauvignon, 35% merlot, 4% cabernet franc, and 4% petit verdot
James Suckling, JamesSuckling.com (April 2023)
Vibrant, vivid purple colour in the glass, rich and deep. It smells bright, super fresh and expressive on the nose with freshly-picked blackcurrants and scented purple flowers - the Petit Verdot really stands out. Clean and clear, creamy, powdery and softly chewy on the palate.
The texture is lovely, you can tell they haven’t over-extracted, but there’s still apparent concentration with a gentle succulence provided by the acidity, cool freshness and appealing mineral touches alongside liquorice, clove, dried herbs and bitter chocolate.
Enjoyable and well-defined, if still a little compact. 3.85pH. 4% Cabernet Franc completes the blend. 15% press wine used. Harvest 8 - 28 September, the earliest and longest ever. 20% lower yields than in 2021. The technical team used a clay sunscreen on the grapes to avoid burning.
Drink 2029 - 2050
Georgina Hindle, Decanter.com (April 2023)
The 2022 Château Pontet-Canet is brilliant and should easily be up with the crème de la crème from the Médoc. Based on 57% Cabernet Sauvignon, 35% Merlot, and 4% each of Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot, it was vinified primarily on concrete (there's a small part in wood), and the ageing is in 50% new French oak, 35% in amphora, and the rest in once-used barrels.
It has an incredibly pure bouquet of cassis, graphite, lead pencil, and scorched earth. This carries to a full-bodied Pauillac with a deep, layered mid-palate, building tannins, and an excellent finish. It has the purity, richness, and structure that makes this vintage so compelling and is going to be drinkable with just 4-6 years of bottle age but has an incredibly long life.
Jeb Dunnuck, JebDunnuck.com (May 2023)
About this WINE
Chateau Pontet-Canet
Château Pontet-Canet is a large Pauillac estate that can trace its origins back to 1725, when Jean-François Pontet gave his name to the estate he had acquired. The wine was not château-bottled until 1972 and in 1975 the property was sold to Guy Tesseron, of the Tesseron family, one of the finest exponents of luxury, very old, aged Cognacs (Cognac Tesseron).
The Tesserons also own Château Lafon-Rochet in St-Estephe. Today, Château Pontet-Canet is owned and run by Alfred and Michel Tesseron.
Pontet-Canet's 78 hectares of vineyards adjoin those of Mouton Rothschild and are planted with Cabernet Sauvignon (63%), Merlot (32%) and Cabernet Franc (5%).
The Tesserons have vastly improved the quality of the Pontet-Canet wines which are now full-bodied and packed with ripe, chewy, black fruits and finely integrated tannins. The wines posseses marvellous ageing potential.
Pontet-Canet is classified as a 5ème Cru Classé.
Pauillac
Pauillac is the aristocrat of the Médoc boasting boasting 75 percent of the region’s First Growths and with Grand Cru Classés representing 84 percent of Pauillac's production.
For a small town, surrounded by so many familiar and regal names, Pauillac imparts a slightly seedy impression. There are no grand hotels or restaurants – with the honourable exception of the establishments owned by Jean-Michel Cazes – rather a small port and yacht harbour, and a dominant petrochemical plant.
Yet outside the town, , there is arguably the greatest concentration of fabulous vineyards throughout all Bordeaux, including three of the five First Growths. Bordering St Estèphe to the north and St Julien to the south, Pauillac has fine, deep gravel soils with important iron and marl deposits, and a subtle, softly-rolling landscape, cut by a series of small streams running into the Gironde. The vineyards are located on two gravel-rich plateaux, one to the northwest of the town of Pauillac and the other to the south, with the vines reaching a greater depth than anywhere else in the Médoc.
Pauillac's first growths each have their own unique characteristics; Lafite Rothschild, tucked in the northern part of Pauillac on the St Estèphe border, produces Pauillac's most aromatically complex and subtly-flavoured wine. Mouton Rothschild's vineyards lie on a well-drained gravel ridge and - with its high percentage of Cabernet Sauvignon - can produce (in its best years) Pauillac's most decadently rich, fleshy and exotic wine.
Latour, arguably Bordeaux's most consistent First Growth, is located in southern Pauillac next to St Julien. Its soil is gravel-rich with superb drainage, and Latour's vines penetrate as far as five metres into the soil. It produces perhaps the most long-lived wines of the Médoc.
Recommended Châteaux
Ch. Lafite-Rothschild, Ch. Latour, Ch. Mouton-Rothschild, Ch. Pichon-Longueville Baron, Ch. Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande, Ch. Lynch-Bages, Ch. Grand-Puy-Lacoste, Ch, Pontet-Canet, Les Forts de Latour, Ch. Haut-Batailley, Ch. Batailley, Ch. Haut-Bages Libéral.
Cabernet Sauvignon Blend
Cabernet Sauvignon lends itself particularly well in blends with Merlot. This is actually the archetypal Bordeaux blend, though in different proportions in the sub-regions and sometimes topped up with Cabernet Franc, Malbec, and Petit Verdot.
In the Médoc and Graves the percentage of Cabernet Sauvignon in the blend can range from 95% (Mouton-Rothschild) to as low as 40%. It is particularly suited to the dry, warm, free- draining, gravel-rich soils and is responsible for the redolent cassis characteristics as well as the depth of colour, tannic structure and pronounced acidity of Médoc wines. However 100% Cabernet Sauvignon wines can be slightly hollow-tasting in the middle palate and Merlot with its generous, fleshy fruit flavours acts as a perfect foil by filling in this cavity.
In St-Emilion and Pomerol, the blends are Merlot dominated as Cabernet Sauvignon can struggle to ripen there - when it is included, it adds structure and body to the wine. Sassicaia is the most famous Bordeaux blend in Italy and has spawned many imitations, whereby the blend is now firmly established in the New World and particularly in California and Australia.
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Description
Alfred Tesseron considers this, his 47th vintage, the best wine he’s ever made. Because of the property’s long-standing biodynamic regime and the extensive use of amphorae for ageing, the criteria for assessing Pontet-Canet are slightly different than elsewhere.
The aromas tend more towards earth and savoury than other 2022s, which are so assertively fruity. The wine’s weave and texture are also different: more open and mellow, with an almost amorphous feel.
But the wine is fascinating; there are no off-notes or impurities and nothing “wild” about the aromas. The estate’s followers will absolutely adore this, and it will give pleasure to agnostics.
Cabernet Sauvignon 57%; Merlot 35%; Cabernet Franc 4%; Petit Verdot 4%
Drink 2029 - 2050
Score: 17/20
Berry Bros. & Rudd (April 2023)
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