Château Pontet-Canet

Founded in 1705 and classified a Fifth Growth in the famous 1855 ranking, Pontet-Canet spent 110 years under the Cruse family — until the Cruses were caught up in the 1973 Bordeaux wine fraud scandal and forced to sell. Cognac merchant Guy Tesseron bought the estate in 1975.

His son Alfred took over management in 1994 and, working with winemaker Jean-Michel Comme, rebuilt Pontet-Canet into something the 1855 classification never anticipated: in 2010 it became the first classified Medoc growth to be certified both organic and biodynamic, farmed in part with draft horses instead of tractors. Critics now routinely call it a "Super Second" — Fifth Growth on paper, second-growth quality in the glass, at a fraction of what the actual Second Growths charge.