Wine Review: Chateau Trotte Vieille Saint Emilion Grand Cru Classe 2024 (En Primeur)

Continuing with his en-primeur tastings, Wine-Searcher’s Wine Director, David Allen MW is visiting the Saint Emilion Grand Cru Classe estate, Chateau Trotte Vieille, where he tasted the wines from the Casteja family’s Right Bank estates with Philippe Casteja. Here he tastes an en-primeur sample of Chateau Trotte Vielle’s 2024 vintage wine.

Château Trotte Vieille (sometimes styled as TrotteVieille or Trottevieille) is a wine estate in Saint-Émilion, just one kilometer (0.6 miles) east of the town itself, on the famed Saint-Emilion plateau. It neighbors the likes of châteaux La Couspaude, Troplong-Mondot and Balestard La Tonelle.

The Merlot-dominant estate dates back to 1453 and has belonged to the Borie-Manoux négociant business since 1949. In 1955 it was rated as Premier Grand Cru Classé B in the official classification of Saint-Émilion wines, a status it has retained through every subsequent reiteration of the famed classification.

The origins of the château’s name lie in the 14th Century. Legend has it that a little old lady would walk, or trot, down to the crossing where passing stagecoaches from Bordeaux would make a stop. She would hassle travellers for any news from the city, and the people of Saint-Émilion nicknamed her “la trotte vieille”, or “the old trot”.

Viticulture at Château Trotte Vieille was first officially recorded in a document dating from 1453, making Trotte Vieille one of the oldest in the appellation. Indeed, some of the vines in the 10-hectare (25-acre) walled vineyard are more than 140 years old. The dominant grape variety is Merlot (around 49 percent), closely followed by Cabernet Franc (46) and a small amount of Cabernet Sauvignon. These vines are planted in a thin (30cm) layer of red clay soils overlying limestone.

Château Trotte Vieille’s grand vin is Merlot-predominant, as is the second wine, La Vieille Dame de Trotte Vieille. Harvest is done by hand and the grapes are fermented in temperature-controlled concrete vats. This fermentation lasts approximately 15-20 days in the case of the grand vin, after which the wine is then aged entirely in new French oak barrels for up to 18 months. Around 30,000 bottles of the grand vin are produced per year.

Borie-Manoux also owns two other properties in Bordeaux: Château Batailley in Pauillac and Château Beau-Site in Saint-Estèphe.

To find out more about this wine, its pricing and where to buy it follow this link to the Wine-Searcher website: https://www.wine-searcher.com/find/trotte+vieilles+st+emilion+grand+cru+bordeaux+france/2024

To learn more about the en-primeur process and to follow the campaign as it develops follow this link to the dedicated pages on the Wine-Searcher website: https://www.wine-searcher.com/en-primeur

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