Julien de Beaumarchais de Rothschild standing in a studio with the painting used for the 2022 Château Mouton Rothschild label displayed on an easel. Garouste holds a carved cane, and the two appear in casual conversation." width="970" height="728" data-caption='Julien de Beaumarchais de Rothschild and artist Gérand Garouste. <span class="media-credit">Elizabeth Garouste</span>'>
“There is,” declared a well-known but anonymous-by-request cultural figure with unequivocal certainty, “nothing else like this in the whole art world.” Those of us sipping Rothschild champagne at Château Mouton Rothschild to celebrate the revelation of the wine estate’s label for its 2022 vintage agreed with vehemence. The ceremony announcing the artist behind that new label has long ties to art history. Every year since 1945, the branch of the Rothschild family working at Château Mouton Rothschild, set on a few dozen hectares at Pauillac near Bordeaux, has collaborated with a different artist to create the label for the new year’s vintage, bringing together the most famous names in contemporary art in the process. The prestigious list includes some of the world’s most celebrated artists, including Dali, César, Miró, Chagall, Picasso and Warhol.
The artist of the label for the 2022 vintage, released this year, is Gérard Garouste. Standing next to his painting, Garouste told Observer that to create the work, he’d been given “around a hundred” photos of Baron Philippe de Rothschild—grandfather to Philippe Sereys de Rothschild, Julien de Beaumarchais de Rothschild and Camille Sereys de Rothschild—to work from and he used those as references from which to draw a striking likeness. Baron Philippe de Rothschild, who arrived at the age of twenty at his family’s Pauillac estate in 1922, changed the fortunes of the wine estate, devoting his whole life to its development and success.
It’s worth noting that while the artist behind the vintage label may differ each year, the quality of the end product—both outside and inside the bottle—certainly does not. On the vintner’s family crest, between two sturdy rams cast in bronze standing proudly on their hind legs, is the legend MOUTON NE CHANGE, which rendered into the less elegant English is ‘Mouton does not change.’ The CEO and chairman of Château Mouton Rothschild, Philippe Sereys de Rothschild, gave a speech on the night of the label reveal, in which he repeated the motto with gusto between praising the newly released 2022 vintage and thanking all who had helped with that year’s harvest for their hard work. “Our harvests these days are not like that one you see on the wall,” the baron quipped as diners turned to examine a medieval French tapestry showing 13th-century villagers and nobles making wine outdoors in large wooden buckets, grapes spilling over the surrounding lawns. Processes and technologies have changed since Château Mouton Rothschild made its very first wine in the mid-nineteenth century, but it remains famed the world over.
(It’s also secured a place in popular culture. Hercule Poirot drinks Château Mouton Rothschild with Dr. Burton in Agatha Christie’s “The Labors of Hercules.” Roald Dahl calls it one of the world’s greatest wines in “The Butler.” In Diamonds Are Forever, Sean Connery’s Bond uses Mouton Rothschild 1955 to expose the villain.)
I had the opportunity to speak with Château Mouton Rothschild co-owner Julien de Beaumarchais de Rothschild who, together with his close family of siblings Philippe Sereys de Rothschild and Camille Sereys de Rothschild, works closely with each artist from the day of the commission all the way through to the night of the big reveal. Prior to his working for the family business, Julien studied art history and then worked for art galleries and dealers, specializing for a time in Old Master drawings. What makes a striking wine label in terms of artwork? “One should be able to immediately get the message,” Julien de Beaumarchais de Rothschild told Observer. “The most important characteristic, though, is that it should elicit your curiosity: it should make you want to look more closely, to feel the artwork and think about what the artist is saying.”
Julien’s love of historical art does not preclude a profound appreciation for contemporary artists. Chiharu Shiota, whose show “The Unsettled Soul” is currently on at the Kunsthalle Prague, was the artist of the Mouton Rothschild 2021 vintage. Olafur Eliasson, 2019. David Hockney, 2014. Korean artist Lee Ufan’s work adorns the 2013 vintage. An exhibition of the winery’s labels, permanently on view at the chateau, includes mementos from each of the featured artists since 1945: a handwritten letter here, a candid photograph there. Most compellingly, the exhibition includes drawings and sketches by many of the artists not usually shown to the public, and the intimacy of these drawings, many of which are preparatory sketches for the labels, is unparalleled. It was the late Baroness Philippine de Rothschild’s idea to reassert the link between Mouton and art by putting the exhibition on tour, with it traveling to over forty museums around the world.
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I was particularly drawn to the label by Lucian Freud (2006). Julien de Beaumarchais de Rothschild explained that Freud created the drawing when he was attached to the Surrealist movement. That’s why the zebra depicted with the potted palm tree has ‘young, joyful, childlike qualities.” “It’s a lovely work and makes a great label,” Julien enthused. The drawing, however, was not, in this instance, made for Mouton. “The work already existed,” Julien explained to Observer. “Freud was very old at the time and he decided to give this work to Mouton. We prefer for the artists to create a new work of art, but sometimes it happens that they—or their estate, if posthumous—donate an extant artwork.”
At the dinner in which the label for the 2022 Mouton Rothschild was revealed, I had the honor of sitting next to Philippe Sereys de Rothschild. As the conversation turned to opera, we lamented the declining audiences across the arts and Philippe de Rothschild drew a comparison between dwindling young buyers of wine with the decline of young opera goers and collectors of art. When asked if he had a solution, he asserted that to get the next generation into wine, it would be necessary to alter the product to match their tastes. Red wine is less sought after by younger buyers, who prefer white and rosé, and also some instruction is necessary for the younger generations who do not know about the correct timings for wines, e.g., at what time of day to serve the vintage or with which meal. As for art and opera, we agreed that fresh introductions were necessary to remove new audiences’ prejudices and preconceptions about both fields.
As the evening drew to a close and the guests withdrew, a sea of empty glasses stood on candlelit tables beneath the gazes of the medieval villagers on the walls’ tapestries. I reflected that all would certainly agree that Mouton ne change. If anything, Mouton gets better and better.
