Trotanoy 2020

Love the perfume and finesse here with fresh flowers, blackberries, crushed stones and cement. Cedar. Full and very long with tight and muscular tannins that go on for minutes. Tight and thoughtful. Soulful. Try after 2030.

The 2020 Trotanoy is 100% Merlot and has a deep garnet-purple color. It is shut down tight to begin, needing a lot of patience and vigorous shaking to unlock notes of tar, fertile loam, licorice, and black truffles, leading to a core of preserved plums and fruitcake, with emerging wafts of iron ore and unsmoked cigars. The full-bodied palate is almost impenetrable - densely laden with taut black fruits and earthy accents, supported by very ripe, grainy tannins and just enough freshness, finishing long and profound. Give it 10-15 years at least and then prepare to be dazzled.

The 2020 Trotanoy, one of the vintage's most promising wines from barrel, has retained that backward yet compelling bouquet with black fruit, mulberry and touches of potpourri. Underlying this is a dazzling sense of mineralité that probably has no equal on the Right Bank. The palate is surfeited with tension and poise. Stunning delineation, one of the few genuinely pixelated Pomerols in this vintage. A very nuanced pepperiness emerges towards its extremely persistent finish. What a stunning Trotanoy. Drink 2030-2070.

The 2020 Trotanoy is the most powerful wine in the Mouiex portfolio this year, delivering a rich bouquet of cherries, dark berries, fruitcakes, licorice, anise and brown sugar. Full-bodied, rich and muscular, with a ripe, heady core of sun-kissed fruit and considerable structuring extract, it concludes with a broad, expansive finish that largely conceals the wine's 15% alcohol. Given its structure and substance, it will certainly require some patience.

Deep plum colour. Pared back and precise on the nose, showing damson, gunsmoke and rose petal. This is all about the crouching fruits and fine but utterly confident tannic structure - it makes you smile involuntarily. There is just so much happening underneath the layers of blackberry fruit - the rose petal from the nose becomes more evident, as does the depth and texture to the tannins. A brilliant Trotanoy, showcasing so much of its personality, and why this is a long-living Pomerol that has menace and bite, but also beauty. There is unquestioned austerity on the tannins at the end of play, but they are drumming their fingers, ready to spring forward. Harvest September 15 to 18, a yield around 42hl/ha. Potential 100 when in bottle.

Drinking Window 2027 - 2048

Harvested between the 15th and 18th September, the 2020 Trotanoy will be aged for 16-18 months in 50% new French oak. Bright ruby colour in the glass. Very floral and vibrant on the nose. Cherry blossom, violets and juicy red cherries. The palate is intense and powerful but has a weightless quality. Chalky, rich tannins provide ample structure. Concentrated red and black cherries burst though, subsuming any spice from the oak through to a very long finish. An impressive 2020.

Reminding me slightly of the 1998, the dense ruby/purple-hued 2020 Château Trotanoy offers a classic, concentrated, structured, regal style that this terroir seems to deliver with ease. Giving up a layered, primordial bouquet of smoked tobacco, black cherries, iron, graphite, and gravelly earth, it hits the palate with a massive array of fruit and tannins that somehow stays flawlessly balanced, offering ripe, silky, yet building tannins, flawless balance, and a gorgeous finish. It's going to need a decade of bottle age to hit the early stages of maturity, but this is pure Pomerol brilliance. Is there a better performing Château on the Right Bank today? Not in my opinion.

100% Merlot. Cask sample.
Another monumental offering that is deep and profound. Complex, dark-fruit notes. Powerful tannic frame as always but freshness and balance as well. Sufficient juice. Dry, firm, muscular finish. For the long haul. (JL)
Drink 2030 – 2050

A sure fire hit in 2020 and one of my absolute favourites of the vintage. Perfumed black cherries, roses and dark chocolate on the nose: ripe and fresh aromas. The crystalline fruit purity and finesse is wonderful while still filling the mouth with a density to the crushed velvet-textured tannins that give the structure and cushioning. Seriously appealing and charming, it’s big and clearly powerful with layers of black fruit, but it has a sense of restraint where nothing feels overworked. Perfectly weighted with balance, poise and persistence – you know you're drinking something special here.

(100% M)
Dense, closed, markedly mineral; full, fresh, concentrated, tannic wine, a fine, full, firm, long-term constitution; very black-cherry ripe palate, broad, ample, mouthcoating, dense, and generous, yet remaining remarkably elegant given all that; freshly defined, long and complex, firm but very fine in tannin, a deliciously deep, sweet, sonorous fruit, then great aromatic length to finish. An exceptional combination of power and refinement, a remarkably complete, yet elegant, fresh, and restrained expression of the terroir. Which will need at least a couple of decades! 2038–60+.