A Bordeaux Legend Takes on Napa: Alfred Tesseron's Pym Rae
This week, staff members in all three stores were treated to a special winemaker tasting and training with Alfred Tesseron, the man behind the wonderful Pontet Canet estate in Pauillac, Bordeaux, and from the Tesseron family in Cognac. The occasion for his visit was to introduce us to his brand-new project on the other end of the winemaking world—our end of the winemaking world, in fact—Napa Valley. Tesseron is releasing the very first vintage of his Napa wine called Pym Rae, and it is as exceptional as one might expect from this talented, venerated winemaker.
When Tesseron set his sights on working with terroir outside of Bordeaux, he was guided by varietal: “We know the grapes, so let’s look in a region where they will be the best. So we came to Napa. My father crossed the estuary of Gironde (from Cognac), I decided to cross the Atlantic.” When Robin William’s Mt. Veeder estate became available, it encapsulated what he’d been looking for: the elevation (up to 2000 feet) promised freshness and acidity for the grapes; the excellent Napa volcanic soil enhanced with clay and limestone would bring depth; 30-year-old vines would contribute complexity. Tesseron bought the vineyard and its large, beautiful house in 2016 and has since fallen in love with Napa. He says, “The problem is, when I’m not in Napa, I miss it. The view is so exceptional that I get goosebumps.” He named his project “Pym Rae,” which was what Williams called the vineyard after his pet names for his children. Tesseron kept the name both to honor the vineyard’s heritage and because he’s French—it’s bad luck in France to change vineyard names.
Robin Williams never made wine from the estate, always selling the fruit. But in the hands of somebody like Tesseron, the potential of the Pym Rae site is being fully realized for the first time. It’s a serious project and a serious wine. Tesseron’s well-known loyalty to biodynamic and organic practices are applied just as rigorously in Napa. Dry farming, for instance, even in drought-prone California, is essential to him. He has earned Demeter certification, and does all the work of picking, sorting, destemming by hand. Harvest can take weeks, as he walks the vineyard each morning and tastes the fruit, picking parcel by parcel. Small parcels get fermented separately, with up to 40 different fermentors for 10 hectares of vineyard. It’s worth it to Tesseron to be so painstaking in the vineyard: “In the mountains, it goes slower. I don’t go with a watch or a calculator, just pick when it tastes good. Skin has to taste good. Pip has to taste good. It has to crack well. If the fruit tastes good, and the people in charge of winemaking are not stupid, then you get good wine.”
Readers, it’s good wine. It’s phenomenally good. It has old-school Napa Valley structure, and rich, beguiling aromatics. Notes of licorice, black cherry cola, ripe blackberries, and spicy complexity waft from the glass, leading to a palate of sweet tobacco, black tea, dark chocolate and briary fruit. It finishes with very firm tannins—this is a significant wine to tuck away for 10 years before drinking, though, there certainly is pleasure in it now. It tastes like a Napa Valley wine made by a legendary winemaker with Bordeaux sensibilities, and that constellation of attributes is no small thing!
In addition to single bottles, it will come in a wooden case of three, with a drawing of the position of the Mt. Veeder sky at harvest. It’s in limited edition, and will change every year. We expect to see it in store in mid-to-late February.
We’re all big fans of Pontet Canet at K&L and thrilled to champion this new project. It was lovely to taste with Tesseron because he himself is as charming and engaging and authentic as the wines he produces. His response to geeky technical questions seems to epitomize his approach: “Either you make wine with the soil you have and don’t use a calculator—or you want to make numbers, and I don’t know how to do that. If it’s good, people will enjoy it.” And we did enjoy it, and the visit, very much. Many thanks to Mr. Tesseron and his crew for the experience.
- Kate Soto