1995 Château Pontet-Canet, Pauillac 5ème Cru Classé

One bottle available. 92 points Parker, 94 Wine Spectator.

Pontet-Canet sits on the plateau next to Mouton Rothschild and is today one of the most talked-about estates in Bordeaux. The 1995 catches it right at the beginning of that climb. Alfred Tesseron had taken over management in 1994, so this is his second vintage in charge, and Parker was already writing in early 1998 that the wines "behave like super seconds rather than fifth-growths."

Where this bottle came from

Bought from a private collector, not off the open market. The people we buy from are ones we know, who bought on release and stored the wine properly for decades. Nothing enters our inventory without someone here looking at the bottle first.

In the glass

Parker found a saturated purple colour and sensationally dense, rich, concentrated cassis, tannic and closed but powerful. Wine Spectator gave berry, raspberry and dark chocolate over big velvety tannins. Neal Martin, tasting it later for Vinous, called it bright cassis and blueberry with a fine cohesive finish and said it was drinking perfectly. Thirty years on it is a mature, classical Pauillac: cedar, graphite, blackcurrant and cigar box, with the tannins resolved.

Critic scores

• 94 points · Wine Spectator
• 92 points · Robert Parker, The Wine Advocate
• 92 points · Neal Martin, Vinous

The details

• Producer: Château Pontet-Canet
• Appellation: Pauillac, Médoc, Bordeaux, France
• Classification: Cinquième Cru Classé, 1855
• Vintage: 1995
• Alcohol: 13%
• Format: 750ml
• Drinking window: now. Parker's window ran to 2025 and the wine is fully mature.

Serving and pairing

Stand upright a day ahead. Decant off the sediment an hour before serving at 62°F. Rack of lamb, roast beef, or aged hard cheese.

The 1995 vintage

A hot, dry summer brought the Merlot in healthy and early, then a week of mid-September rain caught the Cabernet and left tannins on the firm side. It is a good vintage rather than a great one, but Pauillac and Pomerol are the two appellations that came out of it best.

This is not a biodynamic Pontet-Canet

Pontet-Canet is famous now for biodynamics, for the concrete amphorae, for the Demeter certification. None of that applies to this bottle. Trials began on fourteen hectares in 2004, the whole vineyard converted from 2005, organic and biodynamic certification came in 2010, Demeter in 2014, and the amphorae arrived with the 2012 vintage. You will find merchants listing the 1995 as "organic." It is not. This is a conventionally farmed Pauillac from the start of the Tesseron turnaround, and it is a very good one on those terms.

The estate

Founded on land assembled from 1705 and named in 1781 for Jean-François de Pontet. The Cruse family held it for 110 years from 1865 until the fallout of the 1973 Bordeaux fraud scandal forced a sale. Guy Tesseron, a Cognac grower who already owned Lafon-Rochet, bought it in 1975 with the vineyard in poor condition and began replanting. His son Alfred took over in 1994.

One bottle. Once it is gone we cannot reorder it. Ships from our Florida cellar. Browse more rare and limited vintages.