Chateau Mouton Rothschild Premier Cru Classe, Pauillac 2000

Deep garnet coloured with a touch of brick, the 2000 Mouton Rothschild composed of 86% Cabernet Sauvignon and 14% Merlot) boldly bursts from the glass with tantalizing Black Forest cake, dried mulberries, kirsch and blackcurrant pastilles notes plus wafts of iodine, incense, potpourri and cinnamon stick with a hint of cigar boxes. 

Medium to full-bodied, the palate packs in the muscular fruit, framed by firm, ripe, grainy tannins and seamless freshness, finishing with phenomenal length. This is an incredibly complex and multifaceted wine, and it’s drinking deliciously now. This said, I can’t help but feel that it is holding something back, that it still has another layer of opulence and seduction to reveal in its tight-knit fruit and solid structure. 

I personally can’t wait to see how this beauty will continue to unfold over the years to come.

Drink 2020 - 2055

A little more open than the other four Firsts in the vintage, with undergrowth, baked earth and gentle spice alongside the truffles, smoked caramel, spice and bilberry fruits. It shows plenty of the trademark Mouton generosity and ripe tannic structure and is lusciously textured.

This came in at 80% 1st wine. It wasn’t until Philippe Dhalluin arrived a few years later that production for the 1st wine would be lowered, with significantly more Petit Mouton being made Lafite and Latour both closer to 50% 1st wine for similar-sized estates). 

That’s not to say that you won’t be thrilled to open and drink this wine, and it will undoubtedly show that same stubborn unwillingness to fade away that the First Growths all share. 100% new oak.

Drink 2020 - 2050

A blend of 86% cabernet sauvignon and 14% merlot; pH 3.85; 69 IPT; 12.3% alcohol; 85% selection for the grand vin; 85% new oak. 

Bright deep ruby with the barest hint of garnet; still very youthful. Enticing, complex nose of cassis, smoky cedar, violet, underbrush and kirsch; very Pauillac, if in a ripe style. Dense, rich and suave in the mouth, with lively acidity nicely framing the rich flavours of blackcurrant, blackberry jam, milk chocolate, grilled bread and spicy underbrush. Finishes with noble tannins and outstanding chocolatey persistence. 

A great Mouton and much better than another recently tasted bottle that had shown some signs of early evolution. Though this wine is quite smoky and chocolatey, Tourbier points out that Mouton has been using barrels with a medium or medium-plus toast since 1994 more heavily charred barrels were used here from 1989 through 1993). 

The excellent millennium vintage featured a hot and humid year characterized by a very large crop and a fairly rainy first part of the year, but a very dry and warm second half resulted in considerable hydric stress especially on the Right Bank.)

The 2000 Mouton-Rothschild is a vintage that famously came in an eye-catching gold-embossed bottle, though I was somewhat ambivalent about its quality. Now just over two decades old, it has a focused bouquet of blackberry, mint and tobacco/black truffle scents, demonstrating fine intensity if not the show-stopping complexity one might expect from a 

First Growth in 2000. The palate is medium-bodied, juicy and ripe, with rounded tannins and moderate acidity, but I don’t find it complex, and it doesn’t really articulate the DNA of Mouton-Rothschild or its terroir. This becomes quite feral and just a little acetic with aeration.

Drink 2021 - 2035