Pym-Rae
About Pym-Rae
In January 2016, the Tesseron family bought Pym-Rae, the former property of Robin Williams (named after the middle names of the actor’s children “Pym” and “Rae”).
Pym-Rae is a small 7.5 ha vineyard - mostly Cabernet Sauvignon as at Pontet-Canet - on low yielding sedimentary limestone soils. This is a high-altitude Mount Veeder vineyard planted at 550m where locally cool conditions moderate the warm Californian climate.
Pym-Rae practices organic and biodynamic farming – with 2016 the first vintage going through biodynamic certification (by Demeter). The estate is dry-farmed, with not even vine trimming interfering with nature. The vineyard is now 29 year’s old, divide into parcels which are vinified separately in 40 concrete vats of 10 hectoliters each. Then follows 16 months of ageing in new French oak barrels (70%) and concrete tanks.
The resulting wine is complex, deep, and balanced - full of mineral energy. These attributes are obviously shared to a large extent by Pontet-Canet, which shows why Alfred Tesseron was drawn to acquire the estate and work with this fabulous terroir:
“Pym-Rae is the realization of a dream … another exceptional terroir where Cabernets are also the major grape variety, in a country which has taught and given me so much” - Alfred Tesseron
