Chateau Pontet-Canet 2018

A complex nose of blueberries, elderberries, dried fruit, spice and dark chocolate. It’s full-bodied with a harmonious, balanced texture. The tannins are still firm and powerful, but there’s balance and finesse to the whole thing. Tight and reserved, yet long and energetic. The tannins open slowly. Dusty texture. From biodynamically grown grapes. Try after 2024.

• Reviewer Name: James Suckling
• Review Date: March 2021

When I tasted the 2018 Pontet-Canet in barrel I described it as a "freak of nature." The 2018 is more than that, it is a freak of nature. Made from yields of just ten hectoliters per hectare, the 2018 possesses off the charts richness, phenomenal balance and head-spinning intensity. Crushed red berries, flowers, mint, cedar and rose petal saturate the palate in a Pauillac of breath-taking richness. The silkiest of tannins frame the phenomenally pure, long finish. This is a towering achievement from the Tesseron family and former Technical Director Jean-Michel Comme, who together spearheaded biodynamic farming in Bordeaux and built the present-day estate around a philosophy of non-interventionalist winemaking. In 2018, grapes were crushed solely by hand. Because of the tiny yields, the entire production was vinified in Pontet-Canet's new smaller concrete vats. All winemaking was done manually, without the aid of external temperature control or electricity. Put in another way, if Lalou Bize-Leroy made Bordeaux, it would taste like this.

• Drinking Window: 2028 - 2058
• Reviewer Name: Antonio Galloni
• Review Date: March 2021

This wine combines the richness of the vintage with a sophisticated structure of smoky tannins and spicy wood aging. It is still young, with a powerful structure and ripe, vibrant black-currant fruits. The wine needs plenty of aging. Drink from 2028. Organic and biodynamic.

• Reviewer Name: Roger Voss

An unevolved, almost primordial 2018, the 2018 Château Pontet Canet sports a dense purple hue as well as loads of blue and black fruits, damp earth, tobacco, candied violets, and graphite-laced aromas and flavors. With full-bodied richness, serious mid-palate depth, and building tannins, it's mostly potential at this point, but it's a beautiful wine in the making. A decade of bottle age is going to be requir

• Drinking Window: 2029 - 2069
• Review Date: May 2019

The fruit quality is dark and knitted, with a creamy texture if you give it a minute to settle, an obvious tannic structure and a menthol finish that lets in some juice, bramble and hedgerow pleasures. It’s clearly impressive, although I get just the slightest touch of over-concentration with hints of prune on the finish. The small yields meant the entire process, from destemming to sorting, was done by hand (last year around 30% of the crop was treated in this way), then fermented in small 40L cement vats that had seen their first service for just part of the crop in 2017. There was huge amounts of hard work and stress to ensure that no dried grapes made it through, with no pumping over and only soft manual punch down to control extraction.

• Drinking Window: 2026 - 2040
• Reviewer Name: Jane Anson
• Review Date: April 2019