Château de Myrat

The château

Before the ranking, Myrat stood with the best of Barsac. Charles Cocks, in Bordeaux: Its Wines and the Claret Country of 1846, gives it the figure 1 at Barsac, alongside Coutet and Climens. William Franck, whose Traité sur les vins du Médoc first appeared in 1824, puts Perrot there in 1845 at 60 to 80 tonneaux (the old Bordeaux measure of a crop, 900 liters, or 4 barrels), more than any Barsac property but Coutet, and the French edition of Cocks’s guide, in 1850, heads the second growths with it, at 80. By 1853 Franck has Henry Möller there at 30 to 35, and in 1855 Myrat was ranked a second growth.

The de Pontac family, which descends from the Jean de Pontac who founded Haut-Brion in 1533, bought Myrat in 1937. Sweet wine sold badly through the 1960s, the vintages were hard, and in 1976 Comte Max de Pontac tore out the entire vineyard. The rank did not depend on vines, so it outlived the years in which the estate made nothing at all. Max de Pontac died in April 1988, and within months his sons Jacques and Xavier replanted the original plots, 150,000 vines in a few weeks; the first vintage of the new vineyard was 1991. Xavier de Pontac and Jacques’s daughters run the estate today.

Of the 30 hectares the estate holds, 22 are vines, on the classic soil of Barsac: deep red clay, 30 to 40 centimeters of it, over fissured limestone. The planting is 88% Sémillon, 8% Sauvignon and 4% Muscadelle, and the wine spends about 18 months in French oak, with about one third of the barrels new. Myrat makes sweet wine and nothing else, with no second wine and no dry white. The 2003, which I tasted in December 2025, balanced the concentration of that heat wave year with the lift of Barsac: tropical fruit, orange zest and crème brûlée, and a gentle mineral cut that kept it fresh.

At a glance

Appellation

Barsac; the wines may also be sold as Sauternes

Commune

Barsac

Classification

Deuxième Cru Classé 1855

Owners

The de Pontac family, since 1937

Direction

Xavier de Pontac and the daughters of Jacques de Pontac

Vineyard

22 hectares under vine of 30 held

Soil

Deep red clay, 30 to 40 centimeters, over fissured limestone Terroir of Barsac →

Grapes

Sémillon 88%, Sauvignon 8%, Muscadelle 4%

Cellar

About 18 months in French oak, about one third of the barrels new

Wines

Château de Myrat, sweet only: no second wine, no dry white

Pulled up and replanted

The whole vineyard pulled up in 1976; 150,000 vines replanted in 1988; first vintage 1991

In history

The figure 1 at Barsac in 1846, alongside Coutet and Climens