2010 Château Pontet-Canet Pauillac 750 ml

To this day, Robert M Parker Jr.’s 264-word review of the 2010 Château Pontet-Canet ranks among the most extraordinary of the critic’s 40-year career. The Wine Advocate called what many—including us—believe to be the greatest wine of 2010 and one of the greatest of the last CENTURY—“an absolutely amazing wine (with) off-the-charts massiveness (and) laser-like precision.” Parker raved that this “remarkable to behold and experience” 2010 Pontet-Canet “needs a good decade of cellaring” and is a “50- to 75-year wine”! 

While 2010 prices for Bordeaux’s First Growths will set you back more than $1,000 per bottle, the asking price for the 2010 Pontet-Canet—a bottle that comfortably outpointed Margaux ($1,196), Mouton- and Lafite-Rothschild ($1,115 and $1,152, respectively)—has risen only modestly. It’s not often that we call a $349 bottle “a bargain.” But from an investor’s perspective, particularly with provenance guaranteed from the cellar to your doorstep, the 2010 Château Pontet-Canet isn’t just one of Robert Parker’s greatest Bordeaux of the last 40 years, it’s also the greatest value. 

Earlier this year, while in Bordeaux visiting Pontet-Canet, we were so taken with the experience there, that we extended a long-shot offer: We would be happy to host a tasting to share their wines and stories with a small group, if the family was ever going to be in the San Francisco Bay Area. In June, Justine Tesseron, the daughter of Pontet-Canet’s owner, and manager of the property, emailed to say she’d be in town on July 10, on business to visit their property Pym Rae in Sonoma. We jumped at the chance, and arranged a private tasting, which included a few Wine Access members from the Bay Area. 

Tesseron regaled us with stories about upgrading various aspects of their process from converting to biodynamic viticulture, switching from tractors to horses for reduced soil impaction, and building innovative cement fermentation tanks with gravel from the property itself—to “better integrate the terroir.”  

We tasted through the current release 2016, and back vintages of the 2015, 2014, 2012, and 2010 vintages, all of which were incredible. Later, over dinner with Justine, we couldn’t stop talking about that 2010, and drummed up the nerve to ask if any was left to offer to our clients? “Not much,” Tesseron shot back. “But for you, and Wine Access, I think we can manage some.” 

While 2009 was a particularly hot growing season, making for high-alcohol Left Bank Cabernet Sauvignons of immense concentration and supple structure, 2010 was a Bordeaux collector’s Nirvana. As deeply concentrated and in many cases as high if not higher in alcohol, the top 2010s had the black-fruit intensity of 2009 with the age-worthy structure of 2005. Parker unleashed a 100-point barrage in a (must-read) brilliant vintage report entitled “Un Train (2009) Peut Cacher Un Autre (2010)”—roughly translated as “One train (or vintage) can hide the next one.” 

But when the dust settled, just two Pauillac châteaux would earn perfect scores—Château Latour and proprietor Alfred Tesseron’s biodynamically farmed Pontet-Canet. Thanks to Alfred, his daughter Justine, and to you, our loyal Bordeaux collectors, because on the strength of your buying power, Pontet-Canet is happy to reward you with this special cellar-release.