Château Troplong Mondot 2012

The 2012 vintage in Saint-Émilion

Vintage benchmark: 90/100 (appellation benchmark, not a score for this wine)

Vintage character: Merlots brought in just before the rain made for a vintage markedly more successful than on the Left Bank.

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

Powerful and structured, with broad, complex tannins, it blossoms over time into deep aromas of truffle and blackberry.

Blend of the 2012 vintage

Figures from the 2012 sheet

• 13 % vol.Alcohol
• 35 yrsVine age
• 75,000 bottlesProduction

Winemaking

Hand-harvested. Fully destemmed. Alcoholic fermentation in stainless steel vats fitted with a temperature-control system. Malolactic fermentations in oak barrels. Ageing in new oak barrels for 75% of the harvest, for 12 to 24 months depending on the structure of the vintage, and in one-year barrels for the remaining 25%. The blends made at the end of ageing allow for the selection of Troplong Mondot and Mondot. Fining, where it takes place, is done with natural egg white.

Ageing

14 months of ageing: 65% new barrels, 35% one-wine barrels (including a variable percentage of foudre and amphora)

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.