Château Trotanoy· Pomerol

If Pétrus is the prince of the Moueix holdings, Trotanoy is the one I press into the hands of anyone who tells me they have already tried everything. It comes from a steep rise of deep clay and crasse de fer, that band of iron pan that runs beneath the best of Pomerol, and it carries a darkness and a savagery that the more polished estates have long since smoothed away.

The name, local lore has it, comes from trop ennuie, too troublesome, for the difficulty of working this heavy, demanding soil. The Établissements Jean-Pierre Moueix farm it with the same hand that tends Pétrus, and it shows in the precision beneath the power.

This is Merlot of black cherry, truffle, tobacco and iron, with tannin like fine sand and a structure built for decades. For my money it is one of the great values of the appellation, which is to say it is merely expensive rather than unobtainable. I buy it deep when the vintage allows.