This large domaine was established by Jean-François de Pontet in the early 18th century and expanded by his descendants to include adjoining vineyards in the lieu-dit Canet. Hermann Cruse acquired Pontet-Canet in 1865, and the estate was sold to Guy Tesseron in 1975. Pontet Canet is currently owned and managed by Guy’s son, Alfred, assisted by Jean-Michel Comme.

The château has 80 ha of vines planted on warm, meager, well-drained soil located just north of Armailhac and Mouton Rothschild in Pauillac. The vineyard is on a Garonne gravel rise with limestone outcrops.

In the 35 years they have been at Château Pontet-Canet, the Tesseron family has completely renovated the vineyard and winery, building a brand new cellar with concrete truncated-cone-shaped vats in 2005.

Since 2000, Pontet-Canet has gradually moved towards environmentally-friendly viticulture and the Tesserons now use no chemical pesticides or weed killers whatsoever on their vines. The château was a pioneer among Médoc great growths in applying biodynamic principals. Apart from winter pruning adapted to each individual vine, the vines are not trimmed. Growth is simply channelled, and terminal buds are left until véraison. Rather than removing the suckers, these are trained towards the top of the vine and tied up in an arc. This obviates the need for leaf thinning or green harvesting and as well as ensuring optimum sun exposure. The thinking behind these methods is that the more a vine is pruned, the more the vigour becomes concentrated, resulting in excessive volume. By adopting a more laissez-faire approach, the grapes ripen much better. Château Pontet-Canet’s vines are spread across 100 plots. The soil is periodically screefed and earthed-up.

One of the greatest problems facing Jean-Michel Comme was that the soil had become over-compacted due to machines weighing several tons continually driving up and down between the vine rows during the previous owners' regime of intensive viticulture. Furthermore, the machines consumed 20 litres an hour of fuel. Tests are being carried out with horses, which have shown they can successfully draw equipment weighing up to 800 kg.

The grapes are meticulously harvested into small 7 kg crates before being sorted, destemmed, sorted again, and crushed. The must is then put into temperature-controlled wooden and concrete vats by gravity flow.

One of the things that makes Château Pontet-Canet stand out from other Médoc estates is an unusually long alcoholic fermentation (three weeks), as opposed to the 4-6 days at many other châteaux. Only indigenous yeasts are used.

Fermentation temperatures in each vat are closely monitored and half of the grapes undergo spontaneous malolactic fermentation, half in new oak barrels and half in vats at 20-22°C. The wine ages for 16 months in oak barrels (60% new, from seven different French coopers), with racking every six months.

The final blend is put together in late February, following the first racking. In the last few years, Château Pontet-Canet has used more gentle extraction, resulting in a wine that is complex, elegant, and highly representative of its terroir.

In the Bottle

Alfred Tesseron and Jean-Michel Comme have unquestionably achieved tremendous results with the help of Michel Rolland. Thanks to their uncompromising emphasis on quality, Pontet Canet's potential has taken on another dimension. Wine lovers are delighted with the château's recent progress. Pontet Canet currently represents one of the best values of the Left Bank.

Vintages as of 2001 Pontet-Canet deserve particular attention, whereas all vintages since 2003, reflect significant improvement compared to previous years. Nevertheless, certain older years, especially 1989, are also very good. The excellent 1995 and 1996 Pontet Canet have now reached their maturity plateau.

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Pontet Canet, Les Hauts de Pontet-Canet (second wine)