Château Mouton Rothschild

The château

The argument about Mouton’s rank is older than the ranking. André Jullien, the Paris wine merchant whose Topographie de tous les vignobles connus of 1816 surveyed the vineyards of the world, put it at the head of his second class and noted that a footpath was all that separated it from Lafite; in 1832 he gave Brane-Mouton 120 to 140 tonneaux (the old Bordeaux measure of a crop, 900 liters, or 4 barrels) and wrote that its wine shared every quality of Lafite’s. The price gap stayed open all the same: William Franck, whose Traité sur les vins du Médoc first appeared in 1824, had it at 2,000 to 2,100 francs the tonneau against 2,300 to 2,400 for the firsts. The poet Biarnez put the grievance into verse in 1849: who would believe, he asked, that Mouton, as modest as it is great, comes only after Lafite and stands only in the second rank.

Baron Nathaniel de Rothschild bought the estate from Thuret in 1853, at the bar of the Paris court, for 1,125,000 francs; Franck’s edition of that year recorded the sale while its list of classed growths still printed the estate as Mouton-Thuret. Two years later the brokers of 1855 ranked Mouton first among the Seconds, and the first to say in print that the list needed redoing was the trade, not the family. Charles Cocks and Édouard Féret, whose Bordeaux et ses vins was the reference book of the Bordeaux trade, printed that warning from 1868, and from 1898 that Mouton sold at the price of the Firsts; Philippe de Rothschild took up the case from 1922, and the minister signed in 1973. Case File 01 follows that argument through the books: the market had priced Mouton with the firsts long before the decree.

Nathaniel’s great-grandson Philippe took the estate in hand in 1922. He made château bottling the rule from 1924, asked Jean Carlu to draw a label the same year, and finished the Grand Chai in 1926, 100 meters long, holding 1,000 casks on a single level. Since 1945 every vintage has carried a label by a different artist, Miró, Chagall, Picasso, Bacon and Koons among them. Camille, Philippe and Julien, the 3 children of Baroness Philippine, own the estate today.

The 90 hectares of vines lie on the Plateau de Mouton, which rises to 27 meters above the estuary, on thin, poor gravel running several meters down to a base of clay and limestone. They are planted 81% Cabernet Sauvignon, 15% Merlot, 3% Cabernet Franc and 1% Petit Verdot, at 10,000 vines a hectare, and average about 44 years. Le Petit Mouton, the second wine, was first made in 1993, and Aile d’Argent, the white, comes from a vineyard planted in the early 1980s. The 2005 was my wine of the night when I tasted it in May 2024 beside the 1988, 1995, 2012, 2014 and 2015, intense and complex and lingering long after the last sip; and the Petit Mouton of 2015, which I tasted in March 2026, is a textbook example of what a great second wine can do: the signature of the estate, sooner, without pretending to be the grand vin (the estate’s first wine).

At a glance

Appellation

Pauillac

Classification

Premier Cru Classé 1855; ranked Deuxième in 1855, raised to Premier in 1973; Michelin Guide, 2 grapes (2026)

Owners

The Rothschild family since 1853: Camille Sereys de Rothschild, Philippe Sereys de Rothschild, Julien de Beaumarchais de Rothschild

Vineyard

90 hectares at 10,000 vines a hectare; vines about 44 years old

Soil

Thin, poor gravel several meters deep over clay and limestone, on a plateau 27 meters above the estuary Terroir of Pauillac →

Grapes

Cabernet Sauvignon 81%, Merlot 15%, Cabernet Franc 3%, Petit Verdot 1%

Cellar

Château bottling since 1924; the Grand Chai of 1926, 1,000 casks on one level

Wines

Château Mouton Rothschild; Le Petit Mouton de Mouton Rothschild, since 1993; Aile d’Argent, white

The label

By a different artist every year since 1945

In history

At the head of the second class in 1816, a footpath from Lafite