2017 Trotanoy

“Our vineyards in Saint-Émilion did not get hit by frost and we did not put any protection in place,” Edouard Moueix told me at their offices in Libourne. “Even in 1956 the vines survived. In Pomerol we had three ways of fighting frost: the candles that we placed on around half the vines on the plateau, wind machines in the northern part of the plateau and then we had a big turbine with a rotating head that was installed at Trotanoy that protect one hectare. Along with Petrus and L’Eglise-Clinet we protected the entire plateau. There is one vineyard where we lost two parcels and that was Lafleur-Gazin. The biggest challenge was the drought during the summer. July and August were very dry so we had to limit the crop in order to control the cycle. The drought helped us in September [when it rained] as the acidities were still quite high and since the berries were not very big, the clusters were loose. So when the rains arrived we did not have so much problem with botrytis. The skins were still quite tight, we did not have a problem of split skins and botrytis was not a problem. We started picking on 8 September with the younger vines on the gravel soils and finished on 30 September as we were waiting for the parcels to reach the right level of phenolic maturity. We used optical sorting for all our wines [this was introduced back in 2009]. We kept the temperature at 26° Celsius during fermentation which is quite cool and drained the tanks after 21 days. The idea was to extract the beautiful tannin in the skins but not the seeds, some of which were not fully mature, as in 2016. Alcohol was not a problem coming in at 13° to 13.5°. As for the general style...I think it will be a vin de garde. The tannic structure and acidity is quite present. There is a lot of freshness. I don’t think we will be in front of 2012 in terms of approachability and the 2017s will have to be kept longer. Perhaps it could be a modern take of the 1988s as the wines have less flesh?” I pushed Moueix to single out some 2017s that have really piqued his interest. “There are three wines that interest me,” he answers. “Bélair-Monange, because now we understand the heart of the wine. The identity of the wine can be seen. Then there is Hosanna. It is a little less opulent. There is a parcel that we pulled out and a new parcel that is more rigorous, whereas before it was younger vines. For me the real success is La Fleur-Pétrus where there are a number of layers.”

Usually I agree with Edouard Moueix although, I was a little more smitten by Trotanoy. He remarked that for him it was a bit “obvious”, to which I replied: “Well, that’s a good thing in my book.”