Community Tasting Note

Thursday, November 2, 2023 - From a bottle purchased at retail. Although enjoyable for what it was, this bottle was clearly not correct. An eight-year-old Pontet Canet should not be garnet colored and showing this level of mushrooms and decaying leaves. A very pretty nose, but also very wrong at this age. Except for the tannins, which belied the bottle’s youth, everything else spoke of a much older wine. Served blind, the nose and appearance would have led me to say this was eighteen to twenty years old. No score. 13.5% ABV.

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Comment posted by zimmy07:

11/2/2023 7:19:00 AM - sorry. No doubt off bottle, the 2015 is still pitch black in glass and 10 years from gaining any secondary, or tertiary as you described, notes.
Comment posted by Hawkeye_Addict:

11/2/2023 9:55:00 AM - Sounds oxidized
Comment posted by Mark1npt:

11/5/2023 6:08:00 AM - Yes, Jake....def sounds oxidized or heat damaged. There's another brief review just posted above yours and it sounds pretty much like the same thing. I've got 3 of my own in the cellar that I haven't touched yet. The bottle my friend opened this past year was quite nice and did not look nor drink older, but I don't think we got them from the same place or at the same time? Mine came from a family run wine retailer here in FL, do you remember where you got yours?
Comment posted by Jake Barnes:

11/5/2023 8:00:00 AM - Hey, Mark. I agree. No question this was a damaged bottle. Given that the cork was in perfect shape, I’d say what I was dealing with here was low-grade, longer-term heat damage—not the really high temparatures that cook the wine and leave it porty and sickly sweet. This was likely just on the store shelf at this retailer shop under the lights at room temp for too long. This bottle felt like that. Who knows, though? But damaged it certainly was. I obtained this at a popular Chicago retail shop, so if that’s the source of the problem, your bottles should be all right.

Thanks to everyone who chimed in on this one!
Comment posted by Mark1npt:

11/5/2023 8:08:00 AM - Thanks for the info, Jake. I think you're right. Low grade heat damage. Did you try taking the bottle back to your Chicago shop for replacement? Do you have another from them to try to see if it's also bad?
Comment posted by Jake Barnes:

11/5/2023 10:16:00 AM - No. Stupidly, we just drank it. As I said, it wasn’t bad for what it was. The nose was actually dynamite—for a twenty-year-old wine. It just wasn’t what it should have been. I have no other bottles of this from them. I was thinking about buying a six pack because it was on sale for $115/bottle, but I certainly won’t do that now. I should have known better. I’ve had some other iffy cases from them. I have a case of 2015 Potensac that is showing a little more age and cork travel than I think is acceptable even for a petit chateau. I have other local merchant/auction houses I tend rely on for buying wines I want to lay down. I guess I should have known better. Oh, well. Live and learn. It’s not the first $115 I’ve wasted in this hobby. Probably not the last!
Comment posted by Mark1npt:

11/5/2023 12:33:00 PM - Been there, done that, too......but I def wouldn't buy from that merchant anymore, if you've had previous issues. Sounds like they don't know how to store things?