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Wine Description
The Story
Château Trotanoy, a famous growth whose soil was too hard to work (« trop anoi » in medieval French) is located on the Right Bank of the Bordeaux wine region on one of the most beautiful parts of Pomerol. As all wine produced in this appellation, Château Trotanoy is unclassified, but the estate is estimated among the great growths of the region. It was purchased in 1953 by the Ets Jean-Pierre Moueix. Château Trotanoy’s vineyard was one of the few not to be frozen in 1956 and counts today very old vines, the average being close to 40 years. The same viticultural and technical approach as on other Moueix estates is applied here: severe pruning, crop thinning and de-leafing.
In the 18th century when owned by the pioneering Giraud family, the estate enjoyed a good reputation under the name Trop Ennuie. In the early 19th century Jean-Jacques Moueix, nephew of Jean-Pierre Moueix, gave the estate its present name.
As Château Pétrus, Trotanoy is in the portfolio of Établissements Jean-Pierre Moueix, and its wine said to be made in a similar style to Pétrus.
Soil: deep clay and gravel soil
Production area: 7,2 ha
Grape varieties: Merlot 90%, Cabernet Franc 10%
Average age of vines: 45 years
Ageing: in 40% new oak barrels for about 18 months
Vintage 1945
The best vintage in the world – 1947 or 1945? Tastingbook has tasted all the best wines from these two great vintages.
If wine producers from different regions were asked to name the best vintages in their wine history, most would name 1947 or 1945 as one of the greats. If we then compared them, there would probably only be one vintage that most, if not all, producers had named on the list – 1947.
We wanted to test this theory and we tasted them against each other and the winner was 1947 – by a long shot.
The 1947 vintage was a magical vintage. It goes down in history as one of the only vintages that all the well-established quality wine regions in the world were blessed with superb weather conditions. Heatwaves have been experienced all over the world and, for example, all of Europe was blazing under the blazing sun and experiencing a heatwave during the summer. This resulted in very concentrated and very ripe grapes. Growers found it difficult to handle very ripe grapes with high sugar levels because there was a constant risk of bacterial contamination in less hygienic wineries that did not have artificial cooling systems. Since there was no technology to use, many relied on huge blocks of ice to cool the room temperature and even put ice in their fermentation tanks.
This vintage has proven to produce very long-lasting wines from around the world. The wines are marked by a sweet, ripe fruit character and warming alcohol. Due to unhygienic winemaking facilities, many wines exhibit volatile characters. Some might find this a flaw, but for many mature wine lovers, this feature is even a favorite character. However, when purchasing wines from this vintage one should be aware that there is a high level of bottle variation and the risk of having highly volatile wines is remarkably high.
1945 was an exceptional year throughout France, from Côte-Rôtie to Bordeaux. Due to the hot and dry conditions, the grapes were very concentrated and produced an extraordinary, but unfortunately low, yield. The 1945 harvest was an early harvest, beginning on the same date as 1982, September 13. The wines started life with massive levels of tannin and took several decades to develop. Due to the high levels of tannins, many wines still show well today.