Château Troplong Mondot

Château Troplong Mondot is owned by the Valette family, who brought it into the modern era. Alexandre Valette, a wine merchant in Paris, bought the estate created by Raymond Troplong. He already owned Château La France in Fronsac and Quinsac, and acquired Château Pavie shortly afterwards. In 1980, Alexandre's great-granddaughter Christine took over the estate. Ten years later, her husband Xavier Parienté joined her. Together, they continued to improve the vineyard and cellars and embellish the château. In 2006, all these years of effort and hard work were rewarded when Troplong-Mondot was named a Premier Grand Cru Classé.

The vineyard of Château Troplong Mondot extends over thick limestone rock beneath a layer of rich clay, and the water table present in the subsoil combines to provide the old vines of Troplong Mondot (average age 35, the oldest being over 90) with the limited fertility necessary for great wines. This clay-limestone soil, typical of the Côte de Saint-Emilion wines, is mixed with sedimentary fragments of flint and limestone. It is perhaps this unique component that gives this wine its splendid color and beautiful concentration.

Château Troplong Mondot is managed traditionally within a framework of sustainable agriculture (no weedkillers, no chemical fertilizers, no insecticides). Plowing, Bordeaux pruning by Mr. Cordeau with two shoots. Green debudding in the spring. In July, leaf removal and thinning to allow optimal ripening of the grapes. Manual harvesting with picking dates based on three criteria: ripeness checks, tasting of the berries, and the different terroirs of the estate.