2010 Chateau Mouton Rothschild Pauillac

Winemaker Notes:  The wine is a dark and intense red with a blueish tint. With Cabernet Sauvignon predominant, it displays a complex range of aromas. From lightly toasted vanilla notes, the nose opens with airing to reveal fruit aromas, especially blackcurrant and black cherry. Powerful and well-integrated tannins reveal exceptional depth and roundness on the palate, ending on a fresh and mineral finish. Length, elegance, harmony: Mouton Rothschild 2010 promises to be a remarkable vintage – and a worthy successor to the 2009! Blend: 94% Cabernet Sauvignon, 6% Merlot About the Label Artwork Born in York, Pennsylvania, in 1955, the American sculptor Jeff Koons went to art school in Baltimore then Chicago, where he was introduced to Pop Art and the "ready made". Moving to New York in 1976, he worked as a commodities broker while beginning to establish himself as an artist with the support, among others, of gallery owners Daniel Weinberg and Ileana Sonnabend. He came to the attention of the general public in 1986 with his stainless steel Rabbit, followed by the anti-consumer satire of his Luxury and Degradation series and Made in Heaven, a libertine graphic series with La Cicciolina, a provocative Italian actress who was his companion from 1991 to 1994. Proving his status as a leading figure of contemporary art, in 1997 his Puppy, a monumental dog covered in flowers, was installed at the entrance to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao; collectors snapped up his Pink Panther (1999) and Split Rocker (2000), a sculpture made with over 100,000 flowers; in 2008, his Balloon Flower (Magenta) in metal made him for a time the world's most expensive living artist, while the exhibition of 17 of his works at the Palace of Versailles aroused high passions. "The proudest moment of my life", he declared at the time. The heir of both Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol, Koons felicitously combines the Pop Art tradition with the kitsch aesthetic, whence his fondness for taking familiar objects and icons of popular culture and using a wide variety of techniques to illuminate them with colours, distort, appropriate and recreate them. He also revisits Antiquity, as with this Birth of Venus, a famous fresco from Pompeii, which his silver drawing turns into a Venus with Vessel – both the cup which holds and the ship which, under a bright sun, bears off into the distance the most exquisite of wines... Surely Mouton Rothschild 2010!

CRITICAL ACCLAIM


Decanter - "A legendary wine, probably one of the best ever. Balance, power, silk. If you and your friends were to splurge on just one wine in your life, this would be a fine choice."


James Suckling - "This is pure Cabernet Sauvignon magic with incredible aromas of currants, blackberries and light spices. Tiny hints of hazelnut. Wet earth. Full body, with super velvety tannins. The purity of fruit is breathtaking. It goes on for minutes. This is 94% Cabernet Sauvignon, 6% Merlot. Try after 2020."


Wine Spectator - "This remains the stunner, a battleship of a wine, brimming with cassis, blackberry and fig fruit that has melded together now, with the backdrop of alder, bay leaf and menthol starting to emerge a bit more. The long finish is loaded with grip, pulling the fruit and other components together. And then there's that flash of iron at the very end. Awesome wine.—Non-blind Mouton-Rothschild vertical"


Robert Parker's Wine Advocate - "Deep garnet in color, the 2010 Mouton Rothschild is a little closed to begin, slowly unfurling to reveal notes of baked black cherries, crème de cassis, blackberry compote and bouquet garni with suggestions of sweaty leather, pencil lead, cedar chest and black truffles plus a hint of crushed rocks. Full-bodied, the palate is solidly constructed of super firm, ripe, grainy tannins and lively acidity, framing the densely packed black fruit, finishing on a persistent mineral note."