Château Troplong Mondot 2009

The 2009 vintage in Saint-Émilion

Vintage benchmark: 99/100 (appellation benchmark, not a score for this wine)

Vintage character: An ideal sun-drenched season carried the style of seduction to its peak: sumptuous, fleshy wines, immediately accessible.

Overall reading of the year’s season across Saint-Émilion. An estate can depart from it sharply, in frost or hail years, where two neighbours did not make the same vintage. What this particular wine actually gave is on its technical sheet and in the scores above.

Tasting

"Pure perfection in a glass, the incredible Troplong Mondot 2009 offers notes of blackcurrant, licorice, truffle and saddle leather that leap from the glass. This is a massive, ripe and incredibly sexy wine that hits the palate with enormous texture, ripe tannins with no heaviness whatsoever, and a finish that never stops. It is slightly more approachable than the 2005, but the two vintages are cut from the same cloth. Drink anytime over the next two to three decades. Bravo!" - Jeb Dunnuck

Blend of the 2009 vintage

Figures from the 2009 sheet

• 30 hl/haYield
• 30 yrsVine age
• 75,000 bottlesProduction

Winemaking

Vinification is carried out in small temperature-controlled stainless steel vats.

Traditional vinification or cold pre-fermentation maceration. Pump-over, rack-and-return and

punching down. Maceration time of 21 to 35 days, with or without yeast inoculation.

Ageing

The finished wine was drained off into new barrels for 100% of the harvest and will remain there for

ageing of between 12 and 24 months. Racking by gravity from barrel to barrel. Final blending, at the

end of ageing, before bottling.

Terroir

A thick limestone rock beneath the layer of heavy clay, together with the water table present in the subsoil, combine to give the old vines of Troplong Mondot (35 years of age on average, the oldest being in their nineties) the limited fertility required by great growths. This clay-limestone soil, typical of the côtes crus of Saint-Emilion, is mingled with sedimentary fragments of flint and limestone. It is perhaps to this unusual component that the wine's splendid robe and fine concentration should be attributed. The blend is 90% Merlot, 5% Cabernet Franc and 5% Cabernet Sauvignon.