2023 Pontet-Canet

This is a stellar showing from the Tesseron family. Technical Director Mathieu Bessonnet was among the winemakers who spoke of the benefits of the August and September heat spikes in pushing maturity forward. All the fruit was picked by September 20, ahead of the rains that followed. Perhaps more importantly, blending earlier seems to have really helped the 2023 show well in several tastings. I was also thrilled to see Pontet Canet move to a much lighter bottle. Proprietor Alfred Tesseron has been one of the most outspoken supporters of sustainability in Bordeaux. Now, his new bottle aligns with that philosophy, something I would like to see other owners adopt.

Alfred and Justine Tesseron gave a quick tour of their winery, now equipped with specially designed egg-shaped oak vats that, apart from being innovative, do look quite astonishing. Plus, there are concrete vats cleverly submerged beneath the concrete winery floor. “We had quite a cold winter, and then we received 100mm of rain in March, so bud burst was early, mid-bud burst by April 8. It was quite a hot and dry vintage, with 60mm of rain in June. We had a bit of mildew on the leaves but not on the fruit. Mi-fleuraison was May 27, and the stems were longer than usual, an after-effect of the 2022 season. July and August were average in terms of the weather, mi-véraison around July 26, quite early. We had two heat waves between August 17 and 23 and another between September 7 to 11 that concentrated the berries, though we had to use some sun screen [an organic preparation applied to the vine]. We started picking very early on September 7, one day earlier than the previous year, the Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot on September 20 and Cabernet Sauvignon eight days later, a crucial date as we felt it had not been ripe. They had forecasted up to 100mm of rain on September 10, but we took the risk and only received 25mm. We finished picking on October 10.”