Château Pontet Canet, 5ème Cru Classé, Pauillac, 2025
Justine explained they sprayed a kaolin solution to protect the vines from the heat of the sun. There's slight medicinal note and faint whiff of plasticine, mixed with polished red-berry fruit and flowers. Sleek, polished and backlit with plenty of ripe but crunchy tannin below the fruit. Notes of raspberry, cassis and blackcurrant leaf with a verdant freshness and suggestions of crunchy summer pudding. Not grand but quite accomplished and classical.
critic reviews
The 2025 Pontet-Canet was picked between September 2 and 23 and matured in 50% new oak barrels, 35% amphorae and 15% used barrel. The alcohol this year is 13.3%. This has a more fruit-driven bouquet than its peers, with upfront blackberry and blueberry fruit, a little floral in style, with hints of pressed violet that emerge with aeration. Fine delineation. This is finely balanced, quite flinty on the back palate, edgy with pleasing focus. Just a touch of black pepper towards the composed finish. Just the right amount of grip here. Not quite as long as you would find in warmer vintages, but that is moot because of the freshness and brightness in this Pontet Canet.
A blend of 56% Cabernet Sauvignon, 39% Merlot, 4% Cabernet Franc and 1% Petit Verdot that weighs in at 13.3% alcohol, the 2025 Pontet-Canet is one of the finest wines this estate has produced. Wafting from the glass with aromas of sweet cassis, wild berries and plums mingled with notions of violet and burning embers, it's full-bodied, ample and velvety, with a degree of structural polish and sensuality that is rare in the Médoc, ripe acids and a long, penetrating finish. Over the last handful of years, technical director Mathieu Bessonnet and his team have revitalized Pontet-Canet's vineyards with well-timed soil work and precise phytosanitary treatments; and since 2023, the careful use of "pieds de cuve" in the winery, along with early blending, more refined barrel choices and cooler temperatures in the chai—plus more precise bottling practices—have conspired to take this estate to new heights of quality and consistency. In 2025, the team formed lower-than-usual "ponts" (whereby the canopies of adjacent vines are braided together in an arch) to retain denser foliage to protect the fruiting zone from sunshine, and they waited to pick late in pursuit of full maturity in Cabernet Sauvignon, finishing on September 23. The result is one of the wines of the vintage.