Wednesday 29 April
Pontet-Canet loves to kick off a Bordeaux en primeur campaign, and they’ve done it again, jumping in as the first major release. Their 2025 is a focussed, intense wine, and one of the first that woke us up to the fact that although 2025 was a hot year in the vineyards, the wines betray no sense of heat: they are cool and expressive.
Pontet-Canet has been one of the great innovators of the last twenty years in Bordeaux. It was one of the very first properties to switch to biodynamics (there still aren't a huge number who have), and horses are used to work the vineyard. The wine is raised partly in concrete amphorae and partly in barrel, with the aim being to achieve balance through a blend of reductive and oxidative ageing. The old vines at Pontet-Canet occupy excellent terroir next to Mouton-Rothschild, and it's always a wine that takes more time to come round.
Uncorked attended the UGC tastings in Bordeaux last week. There used to be more of a gap between the UGC tastings and the launch of an en primeur campaign, but just as growing seasons seem to start earlier in an era of global warming, so apparently do en primeur campaigns.