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Viinin Kuvailu
The Story
Château Mouton Rothschild A Premier Cru Classé in 1973, Château Mouton Rothschild, owned by Baroness Philippine de Rothschild, consists of 205 acres of vines near Pauillac, in the Médoc, North West of the city of Bordeaux. This Premier Cru benefits from exceptionally good natural conditions, both in the quality of the soil, the position of its vines and their exposure to the sun. It is regarded today as one of the world's greatest wine.
The name Mouton is said to be derived from the word „Motte“ meaning mound or elevation of the ground. It was bought in 1853 by Philippe de Rothschilds great-grand father it was in a fairly bad shape and when the classification of 1855 was set up it was not deemed to be good enough to be qualified as a first growth but put in first place amongst the second growths. An injustice it took Philippe de Rothschild until 1973 to rectify. 1920s Philippe de Rothschild called together the owners of Haut Brion, Latour, Lafite, Margaux and Yquem to talk about the idea of bottling and marketing their wines on their own.
The first vintage to be bottled exclusivly at the château was the 1924 vintage. To commemorate this, the cubistic painter Carlu was asked to design the label, yet another revolutionary idea in this most conservative of surroundings. The idea of an artist designing the labels was dropped until 1945 when Philippe Jullian was asked to design a label commemorating the victory over nazi Germany. Since then works of such famous artists as Picasso, Miró, Dali, Chagall and personalities like John Huston and Prince Charles have been used for the labels.
In 1988, Baroness Philippine de Rothschild, who had already been associated with her father's work for some time, succeeded her father. She has in turn become the guarantor of the quality of an illustrious wine whose motto proudly proclaims : "Premier je suis, second je fus, Mouton ne change". First I am, second I was, I Mouton do not change
Vineyard soil: very deep gravel on a limestone base Production area: 82.5 ha Grape varieties: 77% Cabernet Sauvignon, 12% Merlot, 9% Cabernet Franc, 2% Petit Verdot Average age of vines: 48 years Harvest method: hand picked. The grapes from the younger vines are harvested first and vinified separately.
Winemaking: Before destemming, the grapes are hand-sorted then selected one by one. Vinification depends on each vintage and the characteristics of each vat. All the relevant parameters, such as temperature, pumping over, aeration, vatting time and running off, are monitored by the technical manager, the cellar-master and the laboratory.
Ageing: 19 to 22 months in oak barrels (almost all new, the percentage varying according to the vintage)
Wine Information
1973 PABLO PICASSO We have to approach art as immediate as that of Picasso in a way that is entirely direct, honest, spontaneous and innocent... What we absolutely must not do is put him on a pedestal like some horror in a cemetery and talk about him as "a great man": everything about him is alive, in constant movement, refusing to be confined in a lifeless statue. One of the grossest errors propagated about Picasso, and one we hear most often, is the idea that he is something to do with the Surrealists. In fact, in the majority of his paintings, the subject is almost always completely down to earth, never drawn from the dim world of dreams, never capable of being turned into a symbol, in other words not in any way Surrealist.
Human limbs, human subjects in human surroundings; that is first and foremost what we find in Picasso (Michel Leiris, Document 2, 1930). Nothing can be done without solitude. I have created solitude for myself no-one ever dreams exists. It's very difficult to be alone nowadays because we have wristwatches. Have you ever seen a saint with a wristwatch? I've looked everywhere and I haven't been able to find a single one, not even on saints who are meant to be the patron saints of clockmakers (Picasso to Tériade, 1932).