Chateau Pontet-Canet 5eme Cru Classe, Pauillac 2022

What a finish on this Pontet-Canet. So much energy and brightness. It's full-bodied yet so tight and focused with superb fruit and transparency. It is racy and delicate with a super fine texture. It's like crushed cabernet sauvignon with cassis, tobacco and a cigar box. Liquorice and spices. Freshness of the seed.

57% cabernet sauvignon, 35% merlot, 4% cabernet franc, and 4% petit verdot

The 2022 Pontet-Canet is a blend of 57% Cabernet Sauvignon, 35% Merlot, 4% Cabernet Franc, and 4% Petit Verdot, ageing 50% in new oak barrels, 35% in amphoras, and 15% in used barrels. Deep garnet-purple in colour, it needs considerable swirling and coaxing to reveal aromas of damp earth, fragrant soil, crushed rocks, and underbrush, giving way to a profound core of blackcurrant cordial, juicy black plums, and fresh blackberries. 

The full-bodied palate is laden with nuanced black fruits, slowly releasing earthy and mineral-laced flavours, framed by firm, ripe, grainy tannins and seamless freshness, finishing on a lingering fragrant earth note. Talk about tasting the place! This is Pauillac in all its powerful, energetic glory.

Drink 2030 - 2060

The 2022 Château Pontet-Canet is brilliant and should easily be up with the crème de la crème from the Médoc. Based on 57% Cabernet Sauvignon, 35% Merlot, and 4% each of Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot, it was vinified primarily on concrete there's a small part in wood), and the ageing is in 50% new French oak, 35% in amphora, and the rest in once-used barrels.

It has an incredibly pure bouquet of cassis, graphite, lead pencil, and scorched earth. This carries to a full-bodied Pauillac with a deep, layered mid-palate, building tannins, and an excellent finish. It has the purity, richness, and structure that makes this vintage so compelling and is going to be drinkable with just 4-6 years of bottle age but has an incredibly long life.

Vibrant, vivid purple colour in the glass, rich and deep. It smells bright, super fresh and expressive on the nose with freshly-picked blackcurrants and scented purple flowers - the Petit Verdot really stands out. Clean and clear, creamy, powdery and softly chewy on the palate. 

The texture is lovely, you can tell they haven’t over-extracted, but there’s still apparent concentration with a gentle succulence provided by the acidity, cool freshness and appealing mineral touches alongside liquorice, clove, dried herbs and bitter chocolate.

Enjoyable and well-defined, if still a little compact. 3.85pH. 4% Cabernet Franc completes the blend. 15% press wine used. Harvest 8 - 28 September, the earliest and longest ever. 20% lower yields than in 2021. The technical team used a clay sunscreen on the grapes to avoid burning. 

Drink 2029 - 2050

The 2022 Pontet-Canet is a surprising wine. Usually much more opulent, especially in warm, dry years, the 2022 comes across as restrained and understated. It is a wine of linear intensity rather than size, marked by notable freshness and a feeling of tension and precision I don’t recall seeing in the past. Clean mineral notes extend the finish effortlessly. I very much admire the precision and vibrancy here. Unforgettable.

Drink 2028 - 2042

Vivid plum colour, violet reflections, and chewy tannins from the first moments. Loaded with cassis, blueberry and fresh fig fruits, laced with rosemary, sage, dried herbs, edges of chamomile and fresh mushroom. Tight in its tannic structure, with smoked earth, cinnamon, cardamom and lavender. 

50% new oak, 35% amphora, 15% one-year-old barrels, 55-year average age of the vines. 

Harvest September 8 to 28, with clay used as sunscreen on the grapes to avoid sunburn, and a selection before harvest to drop any shrivelled berries.

Drink 2030 - 2047

The 2022 Pontet Canet has a pure nose with perfumed blackberry and cassis fruit. It takes time to cohere, evolving light pencil lead notes after 8-10 minutes. The palate has a lovely chalky texture on the entry and a silver bead of acidity. Perhaps, more complexity than the aromatics suggest at the moment. 

Fine balance, moderate grip, the mineralité coming toward the final third, it fans out with gusto. There is quite a long residual peppery note on the aftertaste that you can feel after 30 seconds. I had not pulled any punches in recent vintages when stylistically, I thought it had veered too far away from Pauillac for my personal taste. But closely examining this 2022, today, it seems safely within the appellation.

Drink 2028 - 2050