Château Trotte Vieille 2024

The 2024 vintage in Saint-Émilion

Vintage benchmark: 87/100 (appellation benchmark, not a score for this wine)

Vintage character: A difficult flowering and a wet summer reduced the harvest: light, aromatic wines, to be drunk early.

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

“As usual, the wine does not rely on demonstration, which does not rule out a certain intensity.

It is a fine wine, balanced from start to finish, without opulence. It has a certain envelope, long and smooth. The tense length and the liquorice notes lead to the pleasant bitter notes of the finish. It follows in the vein of 2017 and 2021.” - Olivier Poëls | La Revue du Vin de France

The vintage

The year 2024 began with a cold, wet winter, followed by a mild but unpredictable spring. Budburst occurred around 20 March despite significant rainfall. Temperatures gradually rose, but persistent precipitation from April to May encouraged the development of downy mildew, along with coulure and millerandage.

Flowering, which took place from mid-May to early June depending on the grape variety, unfolded under unstable weather conditions. The situation remained challenging until July, with cumulative rainfall reaching 400 to 500 mm depending on the estate. Vineyard management during this period proved particularly demanding.

By mid-July the climate finally improved, with warm but overcast weather. August was ideal, alternating hot days and cool nights, allowing steady and balanced ripening. At the start of September, conditions turned uncertain again, putting the berries under considerable pressure. Harvesting stretched from late September to early October, requiring meticulous sorting both in the vineyard and at the winery. This rigorous work resulted in very low yields, but a wine of outstanding quality.

The 2024 vintage stands out for its elegance, aromatic freshness, silky tannins and beautifully expressive fruit. Gently extracted, it charms with its airy, rounded, floral style - a “smiling” wine, the reflection of a complex but masterfully handled year.

Vine cycle: budburst on 20 March, flowering on 15 May, véraison on 10 July. Harvest: Merlots from 20 September to 4 October, Cabernets from 3 to 5 October.

Blend of the 2024 vintage

Winemaking

Each vineyard plot is vinified separately to ensure optimal traceability, with a cold pre-fermentation maceration, a low-temperature alcoholic fermentation, followed by a warm post-fermentation maceration based on tasting.

Malolactic fermentation takes place in vats or barrels.

Ageing

The wine is then aged in new French oak barrels (100% for the Premier Vin), before the final blending.

Terroir

Château TrotteVieille occupies a superb hillside east of the village of Saint-Émilion; the vineyard extends over a 12-hectare terroir planted with 49% Merlot, 46% Cabernet Franc and 5% Cabernet Sauvignon. It is one of the few estates still holding very old Cabernet Franc vines dating from before phylloxera.