Chateau Pontet Canet Grand Cru Classe 2020

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. 60% cabernet sauvignon, 32% merlot, 4% cabernet franc and 4% petit verdot. 50% new oak 15% old oak and 35% concrete amphorae. Try after 2027.

Composed of 60% Cabernet Sauvignon, 32% Merlot, 4% Cabernet Franc, and 4% Petit Verdot, the 2020 Pontet-Canet is deep garnet-purple colored. It needs a lot of swirling and aeration to coax out notes of crushed blackcurrants, blueberry compote, and candied violets, leading to suggestions of allspice, fertile loam, kirsch, and dark chocolate with a touch of Indian spices. The medium-bodied palate delivers a firm backbone of grainy tannins with loads of bright, perfumed red and black fruits and seamless acidity, finishing long and fragrant. This is stunning.

A powerful character to this wine, touch of oyster shell, soy, salinity, but also creamy with energy, lift and precision, and a violet character that you find increasingly in Pontet Canet. Plenty of Pauillac signature in its tannic grip and heft, with cocoa bean and slate. Deft and exceptionally successful. Harvest September 14 to September 30. No second wine, as has been true for the past half-decade at Pontet Canet. First full vintage for Mathieu Bessonnet who replaced the previous long-term director Jean-Michel Comme in 2020. 45% new oak barrels, 15% one year, 40% in amphoras.

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.

60% Cabernet Sauvignon, 32% Merlot, 4% Cabernet Franc, 4% Petit Verdot. Cask sample.
Dark, dense and very ripe on the nose. Riper than most Pauillacs tasted. Suave attack then a firm charge of grainy tannin. Fresh and persistent but some chew on the finish. (JL)
Drink 2027 – 2040

(60% CS, 32% M, 4% CF, 4% PV; 13–13.5% ABV; 50% new, one third in cement “amphorae”)
Dense, crisply ripe black fruit and mineral infusion; rich and ample, fresh and very fine in firm tannin, an impression of a particularly complete PC; deep, plush yet contained, generous and fleshy yet fresh, with a lovely defining and enriching tannin texture and presence; dark black-fruit ripe and red-fruit fresh Cabernet flavor, long and close-grained, very mineral, complex, compact, complete. A most successful Pontet-Canet, maybe the best yet? 2030–50+.