It has been 100 years since Baron Philippe de Rothschild, an offspring of the renowned English banking lineage, took charge of Château Mouton Rothschild, in Pauillac (France). His great-grandfather, Baron Nathaniel de Rothschild, had purchased the estate in 1853, and by 1924, the young baron was already implementing bold ideas to enhance the estate.
One of those was to celebrate the new bottling of the wine in situ with a label designed by an artist. Jean Carlu created a daring, Art Deco inspired piece for the vintage 1924 – it takes about two years to make the wine. The venture became a tradition after the war in 1945, with majors artists like Jean Cocteau (1947), George Braque (1955), Salvador Dalí (1958) and Henry Moore (1964) contributing, all the way into the contemporary era with Georg Baselitz (1989), Francis Bacon (1990), Lucian Freud (2006), Jeff Koons (2010) and Chiharu Shiota last year.
This year, for the 2022 vintage, another luminary stepped forward. The Maison enrolled Gérard Garouste to sketch his take on the famous winery. Born in 1946, the French artist joined the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 2017, and produces figurative works, as well as created scenographics pieces for theaters.
During the unveiling held in Pauillac, Philippe Sereys de Rothschild, son of the late Baroness Philippine de Rothschild, revealed the tribute would celebrate a centenary of savoir-faire around the idea of “transmission”. The concept played a crucial role in his family’s history, and in Judaism in general, noting that Baron Philippe de Rothschild’s wife Élisabeth Pelletier de Chambure did not survive the Holocaust. Philippe Sereys de Rothschild’s brother Julien de Beaumarchais de Rothschild, tasked with overseeing the estate’s artistic ventures, also emphasized the importance of remembering one’s past in order to move forward. Gérard Garouste, who converted to Judaism and openly discussed the traumas caused by an anti-semitic father, gave an extra layer to the label this year.
For the wine label of the Premier Cru 2022, Garouste’s work is marked with the golden inscription “1922–2022”. It is designed as an homage to Baron Philippe, whose portrait can be seen on the right. The center of the work features the château’s iconic façade, symbolizing the present, while the left part shows a ram as a symbol of eternity – and perseverance ? – drawn from the family’s crest. Grapes and leaves adorn the bottom part, echoing the cycle of life to turn the fruit into one of the world’s most coveted wines.
For Gérard Garouste, the label delves on our collective longing for a meaning in life.
“The ram represents the Mouton Rothschild family, but it also links back to the sacrifice of Abraham in the Book of Genesis. God spared his son Isaac and replaced him with a ram, showing he is capable of mercy”,
Garouste tells us.
“Ultimately, Mouton Rothschild’s wine labels are all concerned with the same thing, which is the passing of time”,
the artist concludes.
A comment that sits well with the motto of the family, updated in 1973 to celebrate the reclassification of the vintage as “first growth”. “Premier je suis. Second je fus, Mouton ne change » (First I am. Second, I used to be. Mouton does not change). Mouton will always be Mouton!
