Château Mouton-Rothschild
The Château Mouton-Rothschild in Pauillac near Bordeaux is one of the most famous wineries in the world. It is located in the north of the municipality of Pauillac, which is part of the parent appellation Haut-Médoc .
The estate is owned by the originally English branch of the Rothschild banking dynasty . In the evaluation of the Bordeaux wineries on the occasion of the World Exhibition in Paris in 1855 , the position of Mouton was honored with the rank of Deuxième Cru Classé . In 1973, Jacques Chirac, the then French Agriculture Minister, reclassified Mouton as one of the five goods in the Premier Cru Classé category.
The former owner Philippine de Rothschild-Sereys (1933–2014) and her son Phillipe (* 1963) is a member of the Primum Familiae Vini , a global association of leading family businesses for wine growing and trading with a long tradition. The winery is an honorary member of the Union des Grands Crus de Bordeaux, founded in 1973 .
Location, soil and vineyards
Mouton owns 82 hectares of vineyards, 77% of which are planted with Cabernet Sauvignon , 12% with Merlot , 9% with Cabernet Franc and 2% with Petit Verdot . The average stocking density is 8,500 vines per hectare and the average age of the vines is currently (as of 2007) 48 years. From this, around 300,000 bottles of the first wine and a different number of bottles of the second wine "Le Petit Mouton" are filled annually . Mouton also has a small portion of white wine called Aile d'Argent (not included in above proportions) that makes 18,000 to 24,000 bottles. This wine comes from vines on a plot of almost 4 hectares. The main grape varieties are Sémillon (currently 57%, as of 2009) and Sauvignon Blanc (42%), to which a portion of Muscadelle is added.
Both Château Mouton-Rothschild and Château Lafite-Rothschild, located further north on the border with Saint-Estèphe , are located on a hill up to 30 meters high. The more than eight meters thick gravel layer of this knoll rests on a lime base. This ballast comes from deposits of the nearby Gironde , which were washed up fluvoglacial from the Pyrenees at the end of the Günz glacial period .
The Cabernet Sauvignon grape variety thrives on this soil. In addition to the fact that the soil is extremely barren and that the yields are therefore naturally reduced, the heat balance of the vineyards, which is favored by the gravel, contributes to the earlier maturity of the grape variety. Due to the massive gravel layer, the vine plant is forced to drive the roots very deep into the ground; the range of nutrients is more diverse and has a minor influence on the variety of aromas in the wine. The Mouton-Rothschild vineyards also have excellent drainage towards the Vallon du Poujalet .
The sum of the beneficial elements explains the extraordinarily high proportion of almost 80% Cabernet Sauvignon in the estate's wine.
The wine
Winemaking
The quality standards of the large Bordeaux estates apply in the Château. The average age of the vines is 48 years, the yield fluctuates around 40 hl / ha. The grapes are picked by hand, destemmed and re-sorted several times on tables in the cellar. The mash fermentation takes place in oak vats . Mash standing time is 15 to 25 days, depending on the year. The fermentation cellar (cuvier) of the Château was put into operation in 2012 after expansion and renovation according to the plans of the architect Richard Peduzzi .
expansion
The wine is quickly in oak barrels , transfers, small wooden barrels of 225 liters, where it 19 to 22 months expanded is. As a rule, only new wooden barrels are used.
Since 1994 a second wine "Le Petit Mouton" has been produced. Château Mouton-Rothschild was accompanied and advised by the oenologist Jacques Boissenot (deceased in 2014) and his son Eric.
Character and vintages
Mouton wines are known for the wide variation in their quality: in good years, when z. For example, if the spicy Petit Verdot ripens and ends up in the cuvée of the first wine, Mouton can produce special wines. This was the year 2000 ( wine rating : 97+ Parker points (PP)), 1998 (96 PP), 1995 (95 + PP), 1986 (100 PP), 1982 (100 PP) and 1961 (98 PP) Case. In less splendid years, however, the Mouton can also turn out below average; z. B. in 1990 with "only" 90 PP, while neighboring goods produce higher valued wines. Then the wines from Mouton are less expensive, but not as much as they are proportionately “worse”: then the connoisseur can easily find wines apart from the Mouton that are equally good or better at half the price.
The wine of 1945 is a special case: in that year the cellar master at the time, Raoul Blondin, managed to put a massive, concentrated and complex wine into the barrels and later under the artist's “V” label “a la memoire pour Victoire” To bottle Philippe Jullian (to commemorate the victory over Nazi Germany), who can still fascinate his fans 60 years later. This luxury wine, when properly stored, is one of the treasures of hedonistic wine connoisseurs and shares its exceptional and cult status with a few other Bordeaux wines such as the Château Cheval Blanc from 1947, the Château Latour from 1961 or the Château Margaux from 1900. It is correspondingly high the 1945s traded (mostly at auctions ): current prices reach a level of 5,000 to 8,000 euros for the normal bottle (0.75 l). Naturally, such bottles of wine are becoming increasingly rare. There are numerous counterfeits of this wine in circulation.
history
Even if the true history of the property known today begins in 1922 (→ see chapter The Philippe de Rothschild era), the ownership of the agricultural land can be traced back to the early 14th century. In 1311 the land belonged to the feudal lord Pons de Castillon . As a result, the property was passed on to the family. In the 15th century, the lands to come Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester , the younger brother of Henry V .
After the British defeat in the Hundred Years' War , the former English property passed into French hands. A small property went to the notary Jacques de Ségur through the Foix family. At that time, not only smaller plots of today's château belonged to the lands. Jacques de Ségur also laid the first vineyards on the site of today's Château Lafite-Rothschild from 1670. His son Alexandre married the heiress of Château Latour in 1695 . From this marriage the son Nicolas-Alexandre de Ségur (1697–1755) emerged. After Nicolas-Alexandre expanded the property of Mouton in 1717 and bought Château Calon-Ségur , he sold Mouton to Joseph de Brane in 1720 (other sources name the year 1725), thus initiating the separation of Mouton and Lafite. However, an existing manor building went to Dominique Armailhacq, the owner of Château d'Armailhac at the time . From then on, Joseph de Brane called his estate Château Brane-Mouton . Under the leadership of the Brane family, the winery, which had no main building, flourished. The documents of the Bordeaux wine trade of the late 18th century show that Brane-Mouton sold its wine even cheaper than Lafite and Latour, but that the proceeds were already on a par with the goods of Pichon.
Joseph's grandson Hector decided in 1830 to sell the winery and devote himself entirely to his other estate, the Château de Gorse . Château de Gorse is now known as Château Brane-Cantenac . He sold Brane-Mouton for 1,200,000 francs to the Parisian banker Isaac Thuret. Thuret left the day-to-day business to a dealer from the Bordeaux area. As a result, the vineyards deteriorated visibly; the quality of the wines could no longer quite meet the previously applicable requirements. On May 11, 1853, Thuret sold his 35 hectare estate for the sum of 1,124,000 francs to the banker Nathaniel de Rothschild . Rothschild appointed Théodore Galos as his land manager and prepared to invest considerable sums in the quality improvement and the expansion of the land holdings. The period of weakness between 1830 and 1853 and perhaps also the fact that the winery was in the hands of an English-born banker may explain why the estate, now named Château Mouton-Rothschild , was not promoted to the rank of Premier Grand on the occasion of the World's Fair in 1855 Cru was raised. Instead, Mouton was recognized as the premier of the second as the top of the second ranked. Nathaniel's uncle and father-in-law James Mayer Rothschild bought the first-class neighboring estate Lafite on August 8, 1868 and renamed it Château Lafite-Rothschild.
James-Edouard de Rothschild, son of Nathaniel, finally had an administration and residential building built, which, due to his untimely death in 1881, was only completed by his widow Thérèse. The doctor Henri James de Rothschild, son of James-Edouard, took over the management of the estate after his death. Henri James' preference, however, was art. He published various plays under the pseudonyms André Pascal and Charles Des Fontaines. He directed the small Antoine Theater in Paris and built the Pigalle Theater. His lack of interest in the winery was expressed in a mismanagement of the estate. His youngest son, Philippe de Rothschild, spent a lot of time in Pauillac during the First World War and took a liking to viticulture . When he told his father about the mismanagement on the estate, he was put in charge of the estate in 1922.
The Philippe de Rothschild era
Today's estate is the life's work of Baron Philippe de Rothschild , who received it as a young man on October 22, 1922 and who, with striving for quality and searching for new methods, achieved ever better results. The exclusive bottling of the wine on the winery was his first revolutionary innovation in order to determine all stages of the production process himself: Mise en Bouteille au Château .
The previously common practice of selling kegs to traders who then filled bottles according to their own taste (sometimes better, sometimes worse) is now almost a thing of the past: Mouton and Baron Philippe de Rothschild started this.
His life's work was crowned in 1973 when Château Mouton-Rothschild was upgraded from Deuxième to Premier Cru, the only change ever made to the official classification. Château Mouton-Rothschild is now a legend in the wine industry and a tourist magnet. A museum is operated and you can visit the winery facilities. Only rarely are the underground treasure chambers shown, where fine wines from all over the world are stored in the dark corridors in the personal cellar of the Baroness Philippine, then in a second course almost all products of the castle from the past 150 years are stored as a reference for laboratory comparisons, and a Third course the exchange cellar contains: Wines from the 60 best Bordeaux wineries, with which Mouton-Rothschild exchanges two cases of 12 bottles each year after bottling.
The wine label
Château Mouton Rothschild affords a special feature compared to the other châteaux every year: the label of the bottles of the respective year is designed by a well-known artist. The artist is paid for the label design with a batch of "his" wine.
The following artists have designed the wine label so far :
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gallery
1975, Andy Warhol
1983, Saul Steinberg
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1998
2000
literature
- Charles Cocks, Edouard Féret, Bruno Boidron: Bordeaux et ses vins . 18th edition. Èdition Féret et Fils, Bordeaux 2007, ISBN 978-2-35156-013-6 .
- Horst Dippel: The wine lexicon . 3. Edition. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1999, ISBN 3-596-13826-4 .
- Joachim Kurz: The Rothschilds and the Wine. A success story from Bordeaux . Econ Verlag, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-430-30005-3 .
- Robert Parker : Parker's Wine Guide . Heyne, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-453-16305-2 ( Collection Rolf Heyne ).
Web links
- Official website of the operating company (English, French)
- Château Mouton Rothschild: The artists of the wine labels (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Natalie Maclean: "Labels swindle. Forgeries and scandals ” , in: FINE Das Weinmagazin, 1/2009, Wiesbaden, Helsinki, pp. 68–75.
- ↑ chateau-mouton-rothschild.com: THE AUGSBURG RAM
- ↑ chateau-mouton-rothschild.com: The Museum of Wine in Art
- ^ Mouton 2007 artist revealed - but what about 2008? , by John Stimpfig, in The Decanter, published January 7, 2010
- ↑ Mouton Rothschild Chooses Chinese artist Xu Lei for its 2008 Label
- ↑ Annette Messager - Château Mouton Rothschild. Retrieved December 15, 2019 .