How the Pontack’s Head tavern took London by storm

by Charlie Leary

During the 17th century, Bordeaux claret underwent a remarkable transformation, evolving from the rosé-hued ‘clairet’ to the dark red wine that by century’s end had captivated English elites.

Central to this change was Arnaud de Pontac of the domain at Haut-Brion, whose innovative winemaking and marketing strategies revolutionised the ‘new French claret’ style. How he did it reveals a lot about early efforts at wine marketing and branding.

Author Henry Jeffreys has written that while “the development of most wines” cannot “be credited to one person . . . (however) there was one man — Arnaud de Pontac — who created modern claret.”

Wine marketing expert Evelyn Resnick highlights that Pontac and his son, François Auguste, established the very first wine brand, promoting their wine through the London tavern ‘L’Enseigne de Pontac’ – a rebranding that for a while led the name Château Haut-Brion being replaced by that of its owners.

Paradoxically perhaps, Haut-Brion preceded Pontac as a brand, and yet for a crucial part of its history, both terms “Haut Brion” and “Pontac” wine were seen as interchangeable, as noted by historians Charles Ludington and Edmund Penning-Roswell.

Théophile Malvezin noted long ago that in the late 17th century “a sort of classification was established among the red and white wines of Bordeaux. This classification . . . put the cru de Haut-Brion, in Pessac, at the top of the red wines, and the cru de Pontac, Château du Luc, in Blanquefort, at the top of the white wines.” This meant that Arnaud de Pontac – owner of both – simultaneously produced the most celebrated, and most expensive, white and red wines of all Bordeaux.

Brion Vineyards and the English Market

Tracing the history of the vineyards “au Brion” in the parish of Pessac shows that while in the hands of the merchant Pey Ap in the 15th century, the area already produced wine for the English market. Eventually, a Brion vineyard was sold to Arnaud de Pontac’s ancestor, Jean de Pontac. By 1584, Jean, a royal counsellor, was selling large quantities of wine to English merchants. As Penning-Roswell suggests, the de Pontac family was well established in both the wine production and export business.

They received their reward in 1651, when King Charles II head to France for his exile during Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate. It’s almost certain that he drank the de Pontac family’s fine claret while there, because in 1660, as soon as he returned to England upon the Restoration, the king ordered the specific cru of Haut-Brion from Arnaud de Pontac.

English Royal patronage quickly made Haut-Brion fashionable, leading Samuel Pepys to note its “good and most particular taste” in 1663. Yet, by 1671, elites stocked “Pontacke” wine in their cellars, marking it as the premier brand. There was no mention of Haut-Brion. In fact, as a Google Books nGram shows, “Pontack” became the hot ticket during much of the 18th century before petering out around 1800. Even more confusingly, by 1840 the term “Pontack” was used to refer to a South African grape.

Pontack’s Head Tavern

The de Pontacs’ marketing triumph in the 17th century came from opening Pontack’s tavern in London in 1666, shifting the brand recognition from “Ho Bryan” to “Pontack.”

The tavern was a masterful move in both marketing and direct-to-consumer sales. The tavern’s sign featured a portrait of Arnaud, not a depiction of Chateau Haut-Brion. We do not know with certainty what the tavern sign looked like, only that it depicted Arnaud’s head, linking luxury wine to the de Pontac family and to opulent French gastronomy. It seems very likely that William Hogarth had Pontack’s Head in mind when he created the etching below.

In another etching, used for the opening of the article, Hogarth drew a portrait of a corpulent “Pontac” gazing upon a scene of rakish debauchery, including bottles of wine, in a tavern. The portrait closely resembles the tavern sign.

Pontack’s Head became fashionable, and with it, the “Pontack” name and image superseded that of Ho Bryan (which, in any event, no one in England knew how to consistently spell or pronounce).

Pontack’s became the place for conspicuous consumptions of elevated (and expensive) meals à la Française. Pontack’s Head served for decades as London’s hot dining spot, home to meetings of the Royal Society, a bastion of the wine consuming elite. Besides the well-known Pepys quotation above, the fashionable poet, inventor of shorthand, and Jacobite John Byrom often visited Pontack’s in the 1720s, including a festive dinner with the Duke of Richmond and Lord Foley in 1724. “We had soup, salmon, neck of veal, pigeon pie, chickens, and asparagus. . . . paid 4s, for we drank French wine.”

Evidence of the Pontack brand penetrating English consciousness exists in literature and drama, where Pontack’s Head earned frequent mention as London’s top gourmet establishment:

• The Poems of Charles Montagu (1687); A Fool’s Preferment: Or, The Three Dukes of Dunstable (1688);
• A true account of several passages relating to the execution of Sir John Johnston (1690); Greenwich-Park: A Comedy (1691); Love for Love (1695); Love’s a Jest (1696);
• Jonathan Swift’s Ars Pun-ica, Sive Flos Linguarum: the Art of Punning (1719). Here, Pontack wine formed an integral component of elite joie-de-vivre and gastronomy. One 1724 commentary recorded that near the Royal Exchange sat the “very good” French “eating-house . . . at the sign of Pontack, a President of the Parliament of Bourdeaux, from whose name the best French clarets are called so.”

This fine reputation continued long after the de Pontac family lost control of the tavern. In The Metamorphoses of the Town: Or, A View of the Present Fashions by Elizabeth Thomas (called Corinna), we find in 1743:

Now at Pontack’s, we’ll take a bit

Shall quicken Nature’s Appetite:

Here Shew a Room; What have you got?

The Waiter (cries): What have we not;

All the Season can Afford;

Fresh, fat, and fine, upon my word.

The Supremacy of Pontack

After Pontack’s Head opened, the wine brand’s previous association with Haut-Brion, the place, rather than with the family, began slipping. In 1677, Locke visited “the vine de Pontac [not Haut-Brion], so much esteemed in England.”

In 1683, John Evelyn referred to “that excellent vignoble of Pontaq and Obrien, from whence comes the choicest of our Bordeaux wines.”[iii] In May 1705, “choice new red Obrian and Pontack prize wines” went to auction in London. Between 1706 and 1711, the oenophile James Brydges bought both Haut-Brion and Pontack wine.

Haut-Brion then became subsumed under the broader Pontack banner, which probably included wine from more than one estate. In 1709, a Dutch trader sent “2 hampers of pontack, one directed for [Mr.] Powys, the other for Mr. Teyler” via “Dover by the first packet-boat.”Hampers would have contained well-sealed, bottled wine, probably blended. By 1704, English wine merchants had begun generically advertising this most expensive type of darker red wine as the “new French Claret” whose top brand was Pontack.

Across the channel, in 1717, a royal inauguration in Brabant (Belgium), served an incredible list of expensive imported wines, which included vin de Pontac but no mention of Haut Brion. Also in 1717, an official memorial on Bordeaux wine exports referred to “les Pontac” selling at the extraordinary price of 1000 livres the tonneau.

Suddenly, there was more than one Pontac cru and no mention of Haut-Brion. By 1749, one commentator preferred “une Bouteille” of “Pontac or la Fite” over other expensive wines. This was “un bon vin de Pontac,” apparently melding together appellation, producer, and quality.

Haut-Brion archivist Alain Puginier explains that a 1740 classification, mentions, in the ‘first growths’, ‘Pessac, where there are the growths of Pontac’ . . . so, several Pontac growths, of first quality, very expensive, produced in the parish of Pessac. The first is, unquestionably, ‘Haut-Brion’ . . . but what is the second?

Puginier says he cannot identify “any other growths distinct from the current Haut-Brion vineyard” owned by members of the Pontac family or their direct heirs. He asks, “could the ‘Pontac’ of Pessac, distinct from the famous red wine of Haut-Brion, have designated the white wine produced on this same vineyard in the first part of the 18th century?”

Maybe. According to one source, “in our Graves, which neighbours haut Medoc, there are esteemed and expensive wines, in white and in red, such as at Blanquefort & some neighbouring Parishes.” The vineyard at Blanquefort was also known as Pontac. But it seems more likely that any wine from the area in Graves near Haut-Brion became known as Pontac during a period of booming exports.

Will the Real Pontac Please Stand Up

The de Pontacs’ vinous success very quickly spawned competition and counterfeiting. They lost control of the “vin de Pontac” brand. Pontack became, like Xerox, Velco, and Kleenex, a generic term referring to a dark red claret of purportedly high quality. For example, a 1722 merchant manual for the Dutch trade recorded that wines from the port of Bordeaux heading to Amsterdam included, in order, “vins de Pontac, de Grave, de Langon, de Bourdeaux.” So, Pontac was different from Graves. This vin de Pontac appears like a generic appellation, not referring to a specific estate. Yet, in 1730, an official French memorial on wine exports stated,

1°. Graves wine is divided into red and white. Red is subdivided into three main species. The first includes the crus of Pontac, Lafitte and Château de Margo, which ordinarily produce only three hundred barrels of wine, which is the most esteemed in the province, and which usually sells from 12 to 1,500 livres the barrel. It’s the English who take most of this wine.”

Here, in the more precise government accounting, “Pontac” was clearly synonymous with one estate, Haut-Brion, but unlike Lafitte and Margaux it used a family name. By 1734, so-called “Pontac” wine was more expensive (24 Dutch sols) than generic Graves (18 sols) but cheaper than “Sec, ou vin d’Espagne” (30 sols) and wines from Champagne and Bourgogne (32 sols).

This indicates that by the 1730s what people called “vin de Pontac” was far from synonymous with wine from Haut Brion. The real thing remained extremely expensive.

Indeed, one indication of “vin de Pontac’s” desirability was that it was frequently counterfeited by wine merchants. Matthew Prior wrote:

Drawers must be trusted, through whose hands convey’d,
You take the Liquor, or you spoil, the Trade.
For sure those Honest Fellows have no knack
Of putting off stum’d Claret for Pontack.
How long, alas! would the poor Vintner last,

If all that drink must judge, and every Guest
Be allowed to have an understanding Tast?

To discern the difference between true Pontac and a fake required a discerning palate.

Of course, Haut-Brion also drew competition from the other top growths very quickly. And they too were counterfeited. In 1729, Irishman Arthur Dobbs referred to “the same wine cooper’d up by different Mixtures to nice Palates, under Mock Names of this or ‘tother Vintage, Hermitage, Pontack, Chateau Margoux, Haut-Brian, &c, all made out of Vin de Grave; some cook’d up in the Cellars of Bourdeaux, the rest here, according to Palates and Vogue.”

In 1743, another medical text described so-called vin de Pontac as so astringent it could cause digestive problems. In 1748, Georg Heinrich Behr made clear that Pontac was commonly counterfeited and that the English consumed most of it. Generic Graves, he concluded, was often sold as “Pontac.”

Not everyone was fooled. Among elites, the wine called Pontac had a strong reputation if it was real Pontac. Bernard Mandeville wrote in 1723, “those who cannot purchase true Hermitage or Pontack, will be glad of more ordinary French Claret.” Of course, fashion changed as well. In the 1760s, Dutchman Johann H. Knoop noted that his countrymen used to pay a lot of attention to red Pontac “that had a strong taste,” but consumption had shifted toward sweeter wines.

By the early 19th century, the philosopher Hegel drank lots of Pontac wine, which he could scarcely afford, but this was “more generic Pontac . . . which are now called St. Estèphe.”

Whatever the complexities and occasional confusion surrounding the term “Pontac,” its impact on the wine industry is indisputable. The legacy of Arnaud de Pontac and his innovative strategies in both winemaking and marketing laid the foundation for modern Bordeaux wines and branding practices, transforming claret into a symbol of sophistication and elite taste.