WTF?: '95 Pontet-Canet

K

Kay Bixler

Kay Bixler
1995 Pontet-Canet is hard as nails. Offering nothing. Maybe a hint of graphite, a plum but just barely. Does this wine need another 15 years or is it just no good?

On the positive side 2010 Brocard Petit-Chablis was very easy going. Didn't scream Chablis, but a nice, balanced bottle of chardonnay for not a lot of money.
 
originally posted by Kay Bixler:
WTF?: '95 Pontet-Canet1995 Pontet-Canet is hard as nails. Offering nothing. Maybe a hint of graphite, a plum but just barely. Does this wine need another 15 years or is it just no good?

On the positive side 2010 Brocard Petit-Chablis was very easy going. Didn't scream Chablis, but a nice, balanced bottle of chardonnay for not a lot of money.
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You need to keep it in a cellar that sees the mid 60s in the summer. Mine started to come around in the last year or so. More plum, more graphie, some tobacco. Still, 95 was before they made most Bordeaux for immediate consumption, I think. Though don't get me started on the 95 Monbousquet I bought on Parker's review. An expensive way to learn better.
 
We're in the same boat with '95 Monbousquet. Bought on Kane's advice, though at a decent price considering what happened after all the hype.
 
Kay, Jonathan -

I understand the rules of thumb and such, but this doesn't sound right. Consider drinking a good, age-worthy 1986 Medoc in 2003. All the tannin and acidity aside, you'd be able to judge the fruit, qualitatively and quantitatively, and, given your vast experience with older Bordeaux, perhaps even the potential complexity of the wines.

Where was P-C at in the mid 90s? According to reports, Jean-Michel Comme is doing a fantastic job nowadays, but what was the deal back then ?
 
Kane advised you to buy the 95 Monbousquet? This casts a whole new light on the dictum, "Kane is wrong." It's true, I got mine for under $20 I think. Actually, as Bordeaux goes, I don't think it got expensive. Maybe everybody figured out the truth. As I've said before here, in the sense that it has worked its way up from nothing to a state of extreme destitution, it has aged gracefully.
 
originally posted by .sasha:
Where was P-C at in the mid 90s? According to reports, Jean-Michel Comme is doing a fantastic job nowadays, but what was the deal back then ?
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Alfred Tesseron had just started making some improvements in the early 90s and brought in Jean-Michel Comme around the same time. I think he was there by 1995 but still getting settled. Quality started improving around then, but had not reached the levels that the chateau is getting credit for today.
 
originally posted by Kay Bixler:
WTF?: '95 Pontet-Canet1995 Pontet-Canet is hard as nails. Offering nothing. Maybe a hint of graphite, a plum but just barely. Does this wine need another 15 years or is it just no good?

On the positive side 2010 Brocard Petit-Chablis was very easy going. Didn't scream Chablis, but a nice, balanced bottle of chardonnay for not a lot of money.
Click to expand...

A '96 Pontet-Canet consumed last Christmas was similarly shut down and inexpressive. Kind of surprised me, I wasn't sure if it was a one-off or just in a dumb phase. I do expect it to come around eventually, but I'm going to wait a few years before trying again.
 
originally posted by Kay Bixler:
We're in the same boat with '95 Monbousquet. Bought on Kane's advice, though at a decent price considering what happened after all the hype.
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I can't imagine ever recommending that wine. Maybe it was Doghead, since he was at Garnet, too? It sure wasn't me.
 
originally posted by Brad Kane:
originally posted by Kay Bixler:
We're in the same boat with '95 Monbousquet. Bought on Kane's advice, though at a decent price considering what happened after all the hype.
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I can't imagine ever recommending that wine. Maybe it was Doghead, since he was at Garnet, too? It sure wasn't me.
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It was you.

KAAAAAAAAANE!

And the Pontet-Canet, after 24 hours of air, remains shut down tight and fruitless.
 
I'm still wondering what to do with the case of '96 Finca Villacreces that Kane told me would be a thirty-year wine. Can you make decent vinegar out of long-dead Ribera del Duero?
 
Now the '96 Finca Villacreces I will cop to. Not the the Monbosquet, though. I also didn't say 30 years on it. When's the last time you tried one?
 
Pontet-Canet 1995 (and 1996) was made with malo in barrel and reverse osmosis. I wouldn't expect the wine ever to be interesting. Fortunately, by the mid-2000s, RO had been abandoned at the estate (not sure about malo in barrel).

Monbousquet 1995 was also made the same way, I believe but I do not know for sure.
 
originally posted by Michael Lewis:
originally posted by .sasha:
Where was P-C at in the mid 90s? According to reports, Jean-Michel Comme is doing a fantastic job nowadays, but what was the deal back then ?
Click to expand...

Alfred Tesseron had just started making some improvements in the early 90s and brought in Jean-Michel Comme around the same time. I think he was there by 1995 but still getting settled. Quality started improving around then, but had not reached the levels that the chateau is getting credit for today.
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The quality today has not yet reached the levels the chateau is getting credit for today, either.
 
I took Kay's complaint about P-C to be that there was nothing there. And while I found more there, I wasn't disputing that. Neither of these reports, or at least mine, is consistent with my notion of spoof, which is that there's way too much there that one doesn't want there. Monbousquet being the case in point. I'm happy to take Claude's information that the winemaking practices for those two wines were the same. That just means that those practices don't always produce for my palate the kinds of objectionable tastes I object to in using the word spoof,since Monbousquet can be used to teach what spoof means, while that was not my impression of the 95 P-C.
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
Neither of these reports, or at least mine, is consistent with my notion of spoof, which is that there's way too much there that one doesn't want there.
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Not necessarily, at least not in Bordeaux. I've met quite a few animals which appeared balanced and very attractive to begin with, but have gone flat and uninteresting since. Consider the likes of Poyferre from the late 90s, Camensac over the past decade, etc. In fact, I found 1995 Pontet-Canet to be quite decent in 2002.

The stuff appears front-loaded, possibly to give a glimpse of the good old days of Bordeaux from the more generous vintages - something a young claret isn't supposed to do. But I am just guessing, as far as the original intent is concerned.

There is no question I was fooled by some of these wines on release, but I am learning.
 
I'm happy to accept both Joe's and Sasha's explanation. I have insufficient experience as I tend just to go away from wines that display spoof and never come back, so I may not learn until years down the road. Still, Monbousquet does not support the sic transit theory. Saddled with a case, as a matter of scientific experiment, I check in. To judge from it, spoof changes but it changes like spoof. In CdP, les Cailloux developed early aging syndrome, but didn't taste like a shut down wine. Other Cambies that I have gotten before I knew better age like what they are. But I don't have Cambies earlier than the early aughts, I think, and few to test as there I learned more quickly. So hardly, in toto, a sufficient sample to do other than register impressions.
 
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