Andrew Jefford | Dark black-red, with a little more purple and just a little more saturation of color than La Fleur-Pétrus. Plum pie, plum stew, plum compote: Trotanoy always seems to do the plummy side of Pomerol so well. Deep fruit flesh, well above the ankle and half-way up the calf; but the cooler cast of 2016 is evident here, too, quietly noted and expressed by the Trotanoy clay parcels. Thus the allusive extras take us off toward the thickness of the forest rather than out into the sunlight of the gravel plains. Very dense and weighty on the palate, indeed drivingly so: long, depth-charging Pomerol, all plum and mulberry. It’s not, in fact, hugely tannic, though the depth of fruit makes it seem so (or perhaps it’s that the tannins are so deeply buried in the fruits that you don’t actually realize they are tannins). This will need a long time to get into the mellow sussurations of age, and it will always carry the coolness of clay within it, but it is a very fine Trotanoy. | 95

Michael Schuster | Still relatively closed, but sweet and mineral to smell; full, fresh, firmly tannic; deep and freshly sweet in flavor, a most attractive succulence framed by a sinewy tannin, long, pure, tenacious flavor, typically long-term and muscular, and with a splendidly persistent, markedly aromatic aftertaste. Great, powerful Trotanoy in the making. Will need at least a decade, and ideally more, in bottle, but will give enormous satisfaction in the long term. 2030–50+. | 94