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  • Country ranking ?

    81
  • Producer ranking ?

    8
  • Decanting time

    4h
  • When to drink

    from 2028
  • Food Pairing

    Grilled Sirloin with Haricot Verts and bacon, Roasted lamb saddle with rosemary potatots & hard cheeses

The Tb points given to this wine are the world’s most valid and most up-to-date evaluation of the quality of the wine. Tastingbook points are formed by the Tastingbook algorithm which takes into account the wine ratings of the world's best-known professional wine critics, wine ratings by thousands of tastingbook’s professionals and users, the generally recognised vintage quality and reputation of the vineyard and winery. Wine needs at least five professional ratings to get the Tb score. Tastingbook.com is the world's largest wine information service which is an unbiased, non-commercial and free for everyone.

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Peter Doig creates the original artwork for the Château Mouton Rothschild 2020 label

 

A British painter of Scottish origin who divides his time between London and Trinidad, Peter Doig is the artist chosen by Château Mouton Rothschild to create the original artwork to illustrate the label for its 2020 vintage.

In his work for the label, the painter combines echoes of Cézanne and van Gogh with a fascinating personal reverie on the nocturnal birth of a great wine, seemingly brought to life by the strange magic of a song played on the guitar.

The painting is a dreamscape. The artist has sought to create a picture that celebrates the growing and harvesting of grapes, showing workers in the vineyard. Peter Doig wished to establish a connection with artists like Millet, van Gogh and Bacon who had depicted vineyard or farm workers. The work also had a personal inspiration in his Trinidadian friend, an artist known as Embah (Emheyo Bhabba) who brought a cuatro - a four string guitar - to one of Doig’s exhibitions in Paris and shared his music and poetry during the course of the evening.

The painting shows something of what goes on behind the scenes in the production of wine, what happens offstage, as it were. It’s a sort of ode to workers, to all those involved at the various stages of making a wine before it’s finally bottled. It’s a dream with a romantic streak, as if someone spontaneously decided to sing in the vines. It’s a moment of poetry, where you can take your time. It’s neither really day nor really night, but rather something in between, between waking and sleeping. It is possible to see it as a progression, a dream journey in the world of the harvest.”

 

Julien de Beaumarchais de Rothschild, co-owner of Château Mouton Rothschild with responsibility for the estate’s artistic and cultural activity and relations with the artist who creates the original artwork for the label of each new vintage, explains:

We wanted an artist who uses canvas and pictorial material to express figurative subjects. Unrivalled as a colourist, Peter Doig focuses entirely on painting and has become one of his generation’s foremost exponents of the discipline, holding exhibitions all over the world. There is something very special about his technique and his universe that sets them apart in contemporary figurative art. His subjects are very varied, his painting resists any classification: he has succeeded in creating his own, inimitable world.

It was Baron Philippe de Rothschild’s ambition to make Château Mouton Rothschild a place of art and beauty. Since 1945, the label for each vintage of Château Mouton Rothschild has been illustrated by an original artwork. Year after year, they enhance a unique collection of contemporary art by very different artists from a wide variety of backgrounds, including Dalí, César, Miró, Chagall, Picasso, Warhol, Soulages, Bacon, Balthus, Tàpies, Jeff Koons, David Hockney, Annette Messager and Olafur Eliasson.

All the artworks can be seen in the Paintings for the Labels exhibition, created by Baroness Philippine de Rothschild in 1981 and on permanent display at Château Mouton Rothschild since 2013.

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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)
 

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Vintage 2020

In Bordeaux, the heat resulted in early flowering. Also, this led to an early harvest after a very hot summer. As a starting point, there is great maturity in the grapes, and one can expect a more opulent vintage than in the last few years.

The summer this year has been the warmest since 1959, yet the rain has fallen at the right times during the growing season. The harvest took place two weeks before the norm and will yield grapes with high potential alcohol and the lowest acidity since the 2003 vintage. As they say in Bordeaux: "It has been a good and extreme growing season which hopefully also produces great wines".

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Tasting note

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Written Notes

 Truffles, cigar box, cedar chest, smoke, Cuban cigar wrapper, spice and dark, almost 100% cocoa, chocolate. Perfectly perched between its elegant and showy side, the fruits are silky, ripe, spicy, and intense, but in a relaxed manner. There is purity, length, and vibrancy, giving the wine a racy, sensuous appearance. The seamless finish is perfectly balanced, with all its layers of polished, sensuous, silky fruits. The wine blends 84% Cabernet Sauvignon,13% Merlot, 2% Cabernet Franc and 1% Petit Verdot, 13.1% ABV, pH 3.8. Yields were low at 32 hectoliters per hectare with only 49% of the harvest going into the Grand Vin, so not much wine was made. The harvest took place September 7-September 24. Drink 2028-2060.

  • 99p

This is a great and impressive Mouton with plushness and precision. A million layers of tannins. It’s full and very friendly, even seductive, in a rich and opulent way, yet it always remains fresh. Balanced and refined. Nothing sticks out here. Every so fine-grained tannins provide flesh. Looking forward to seeing its evolution. 84% cabernet sauvignon, 13% merlot, 2% cabernet franc and 1% petit verdot.

  • 100p

Dense purple-hued and a monster of a wine, the 2020 Château Mouton Rothschild checks in as 84% Cabernet Sauvignon, 13% Merlot, and the rest Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot, all of which hit 13.1% natural alcohol with a pH of 3.78. Classic Mouton notes of cassis and currant fruits give way to a more mineral-driven red offering loads of scorched earth, graphite, liquid violets, and crushed stone aromas and flavors. Gorgeously concentrated, full-bodied, and structured, with a firm tannic, inward style that relents with time in the glass, this is a serious Mouton that's going to need a decade of cellaring yet should be just about immortal. 
Barrel Sample: 97-99

  • 99p

Mouton Rothschild 1. Growth - 84% Cabernet Sauvignon, 13% Merlot, 2% Cabernet Franc and 1% Petit Verdot. 13.1% alcohol. First vintage made by Jean-Emmanuel Danjoy, who was before the manager of Clerc Milon. Upper-class nose, distinctive, and deeply intense. Potent with a strong backbone, layers and layers of creamy fruit and fat tannin cover the palate. Spectacular structure and complexity, sophisticated and mega long finish. This wine ticks all the boxes and will for sure be another legend in the making! 98-100p.

  • 100p

Château Mouton-Rothschild 2020 / Ruby. Fruit driven, cassis, anise, some spices nose, blackberries, intensely scented, almost transparent yet such depth. Fresh acidity, ripe tannins, dark fruits, smooth and detailed, layered, anise, liquorice, deep, long. Superb freshness to it. Such energy. Pauillac is not the place that shines the most in 2020, but this one does. 97-99

  • 99p

Excellent with intense purple colour, violet hue and black core. Very classic style with freshness and great complexity. Crisp fruit, blackcurrants and blackberries, elderberries in the background. backed by typical aroma reminiscent of graphite, fine toasting aroma and hints of smoke. Subtle oak. On the palate great power and aromatic depth, well structured with exciting tension, ripe and silky tannins, refined acidity, typical minerality. A wine with excellent structure, great depth and power yet remaining on a very elegant side. A wine with great purity, precision and extremely promising potential. 

  • 99p
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Origin

Pauillac, Bordeaux
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