2009 Château Troplong Mondot

Community Tasting Note

Bordeaux_Jon Does not like this wine:

86 Points

Saturday, April 16, 2022 - From a half bottle. A tannic austere beast that may have been mildly corked. Either way, we need to knock down this wine’s CT score. Moderately better than the over the hill 2005 Troplong is was tasted with. A far cry from the 2009 Figeac and Beausejour Duffau I’m drinking now. I’m done with Troplong. Clearly a St Emilion pretender, all rupees and oak.

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9 comments have been posted

Comment posted by StefanAkiko:

4/17/2022 11:26:00 AM - If corked, definitely a "flaw", don't you think ;-)
Comment posted by Bordeaux_Jon:

4/17/2022 11:39:00 AM - I’m not really sure. Sometimes I smelled TCA and sometimes not. So I don’t feel definitive on the cause of the poor quality of this wine.

Also, I don’t philosophically agree that a vintage with many flawed bottles should be privileged to skip those bottles in its score. I think we should account for flawed bottles and drag down the score. I don’t want to read cellartracker reviews of a wine with many flaws and be mislead by its high score.
Comment posted by StefanAkiko:

4/17/2022 11:48:00 AM - You certainly have your mission focus: to lower the scores of TM. I hope you can find satisfaction in more positive missions moving forward.
Best of plop-luck to you.
Comment posted by Bordeaux_Jon:

4/17/2022 12:07:00 PM - Thanks. After that 2005 and 2009 and the resulting crummy wine evening I feel entitled.
Comment posted by BordeauxNut:

4/17/2022 12:31:00 PM - Looking at your other notes now — why rate a wine that ‘might be corked?’ And, it either was or wasn’t corked.
Comment posted by Bordeaux_Jon:

4/17/2022 12:38:00 PM - Respectfully, I have been drinking wine seriously for 15 years and have tasted with other serious wine aficionados, professional wine makers, and wine critics. From this experience, I know I am not the best taster when assessing corker bottles. Others have much sharper noses and many less sharp. Further, sometime other aromas manifest as tca but are transient. For this wine, both my wife and I were not sure. So I leave it ambiguous. There was a lot of material in the wine beyond the potential taint, like hefty tannins and over use of agreesively toasted oak. I can use that to determine that this wine sucks, especially today after trying substantially better half bottles of 2009 Figeac and Beausejour Duffau.
Comment posted by I'd Rather Be Drinking Wine:

4/17/2022 4:57:00 PM - With all due respect, I disagree with your assessment that CT scores should be lowered to account for corked bottles. I think you underestimate CT reviewers, including myself.....Obviously, speaking for myself, I look over reviews, and if I see a lot of reviews that show "flawed" "corked" that gives me a good idea of my chances of also having a corked bottle. However, as a follower of CT, I would much rather have an indication of how the wine rates if it is not corked, rather than a skewed rating that includes corked bottles.
Comment posted by I'd Rather Be Drinking Wine:

4/17/2022 4:57:00 PM - With all due respect, I disagree with your assessment that CT scores should be lowered to account for corked bottles. I think you underestimate CT reviewers, including myself.....Obviously, speaking for myself, I look over reviews, and if I see a lot of reviews that show "flawed" "corked" that gives me a good idea of my chances of also having a corked bottle. However, as a follower of CT, I would much rather have an indication of how the wine rates if it is not corked, rather than a skewed rating that includes corked bottles.
Comment posted by jonboy74:

4/19/2022 3:00:00 PM - There must be some bottle variation going on - I had one of these last year and it was awesome. Definitely NOT a tannic austere beast as I would not have enjoyed that one bit...sorry you had a bad experience!