PONTET CANET 2020

The flagship from this estate, the 2020 Château Pontet-Canet is a beauty based on 60% Cabernet Sauvignon, 32% Merlot, and 4% each of Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot, brought up in 50% new oak, with 35% in amphora. Deep purple-hued with a great nose of dark currants, plums, tobacco leaf, and truffly earth, it hits the palate with full-bodied richness, a layered, seamless mouthfeel and a great finish. The higher Merlot content here really shows in its overall sexy, supple, seamless style, and while this already offers pleasure, it's going to be one for the ages as well.

The 2020 Pontet-Canet is captivating effort from the Tesseron family. The intensely perfumed, savory bouquet is immediately alluring. Deep and substantial, the 2020 is luxuriously rich from start to finish. Swaths of incisive tannin wrap around a core of dark red cherry fruit, gravel, dried herbs and rose petal, and a whole range of floral and savory accents lend aromatic presence. The Pontet-Canet is often a charmer en primeur , but the 2020 comes across as quite serious. I can't wait to see how it develops. As always, one of the signatures of Pontet-Canet is a high proportion of Merlot vis-à-vis its peers among top Left Bank châteaux that lends tremendous midpalate weight. In 2020 production is within historical norms. Mildew pressure was high, but not as severe as in 2018, when two-thirds of the crop was lost in a single day. Harvest took place September 14–30, a bit more of a compact time frame than normal, and a good 7–10 days earlier than is typically the case. Aged in 50% new oak, 35% amphora and 15% once-used barrels.

Aromas of blackcurrants and black cherries with hints of crushed walnuts, grilled thyme, cocoa powder and graphite. It’s full-bodied with layers of ultra-fine, silky tannins that elegantly coat your palate, allowing the juicy and vibrant fruit to shine. Delicate and pristine, yet compact with lots of energy and power to uncover in the coming years. It lasts for minutes and is delicious now. The purity of fruit is really impressive.

While Justine Tesseron declined my request to taste at the property, I was able to acquire a bottle of the 2020 Pontet-Canet for review. The wine starts strong, wafting from the glass with attractive aromas of cherries, sweet berries and plum preserve mingled with lilac and licorice, but that's followed by a medium to full-bodied, firm and extracted palate that lacks the amplitude and flesh to conceal the rather drying tannins which dominate the earthy finish. It's an open secret among Bordeaux insiders that this estate—which has benefited from such significant and laudable investments and which was on such an upward trajectory through 2011—has been a perplexingly erratic performer since 2012, intermingling successful vintages with relative failures, and the 2020 only confirms that. While the 2020 isn't by any means a flawed wine, and time may well be kind to it, it doesn't transcend this estate's fifth growth status, even if this château's terroir clearly has the potential to.