As a relative newcomer to Bordeaux, my circle of experience has been pretty small and I’m making a concerted effort to taste more widely. I picked this up on a whim, having heard the name of the chateau but not knowing much beyond it. The TN speaks for itself, but for future reference I’d love to know if what I’m tasting is the “house style” of Troplong, or the vintage, or something else? This is unlike anything I’ve come across so far in my admittedly limited Bordeaux experience.
2014 Château Troplong Mondot - France, Bordeaux, Libournais, St. Émilion Grand Cru (6/16/2023)
Tasted over 2 nights. Opaque purple in the glass, a hint of deep ruby at the rim. On the nose, all the dark notes - chocolate/cocoa, espresso bean, dark cedar. Taste? In a word, overpowering. Pushed to the edge in terms of fruit and sweetness. The characteristics are more like port to me. Is this what people mean by overly extracted? The label says 14.5 but I want to say there's a foreign object involved, brass knuckles or a steel toe. Feels more like one of those 16% bruisers. What I will say is that this does have the structure to go another 5-10, if this is your thing.
It seems to me that if one is trying to learn more about Bordeaux, St Emilion could be more confusing than other AOC. It’s hard for me to think of a single property that captures all the flavors on offer there.
I’ve not tried recent Troplong Mondots, but some of their older ones were special, like 1989 and 1990.
Welcome to Troplong Mondot! You should definitely try the 2010. ;). And your bad experience came from a classic vintage, lol. Imagine what the ripe vintages produced.
Reputedly, the pendulum has swing the other direction at this estate, but given where it comes from, I’m not willing to shell out $100+ to “check it out”.
Starting around 2017 when they brought on Aymeric de Gironde from the other side of the river, but 2020 is probably the first opportunity to see what they can pull off in a top-notch vintage.
Yeah this was $115 at my local shop. Worth it as a learning experience, not worth the risk to see if style has changed when there is so much out there better suited to my tastes.
I dunno, tough to say, I don’t have a great handle on the current style yet - 2019 and 2020 are both back in a pretty structured, classic mold but they were also kind of backwards and hard for me to get a read on. I don’t think the ~$110 price point is terribly unreasonable since there seems to be a dearth of Bordeaux in that zone - you’re either paying in the $50s-$60s or taking a huge step up to $175+ for the most part, and since they were already getting high prices when they were making the “on steroids” version of the wine you can’t really ask them to cut prices now that the wine is better. Fortunately there are a lot more St. Emilions to choose from these days that aren’t ruined by the push for a steroids product. My current favorite that costs less than Troplong (at least for now) is Beau-sejour Becot.
