 The commission to illustrate the 2009 vintage was given to the sculptor, painter and visual artist Anish Kapoor who is a British citizen of Indian origin and is Mumbai –born. He is a leading figure of contemporary art. His work reflects and transcends the world's diversity through a constant invention of form . His works are on display in the world's leading museums and in prestigious public places, such as the Rockefeller Center in New York. Leviathan at the Grand Palais in Paris in 2011 drew thousands of visitors. He has been commissioned to design the emblematic sculpture for the London Olympic Games, says the Release.
The austere and yet flamboyant, the gouache (an opaque water colour mixed with gum), he has created for Mouton Rothschild 2009 expresses the fertile thrust of plant life, the result of an intense encounter between matter and light.
This is not the first time Kapoor has been commissioned by a winery for his work. A few years ago, when I had visited Castello di Ama, one of the top wineries of Chianti Classico region, the owners and wine and art connoisseurs Marco Pallanti and his wife Lorenza Sebasti proudly showed me and the visiting journalists from India, the work they had Kapoor execute for them in 2004. He was not very well-known in India until last year when he had organised an exhibition of his celebrated works at the National gallery of Modern Arts in Delhi and Mehboob Film Studio Mumbai.
In 1924, the Baron Philippe de Rothschild had inaugurated the first "artist's label to celebrate first bottling of the wines exclusively from the Estate grapes. Rothschild starting using labels designed in original by well known artists since the end of the World War II in 1945. The artists are rewarded with cases of the Chateau wine of that vintage. Prince Charles had designed the label for Mouton 2004. . Cocteau, Braque, Dali, César, Miró, Chagall, Picasso, Warhol, Soulages, Bacon and Balthus are some of the other artists who have designed a label for the Estate.
Mouton Rothschild is one of the five First Growths, the fifth and the only addition to the famous 1855 Classification that rates the top Chateaux of Left bank of Bordeaux in five different growths. The Premier Cru Classé is made from grapes grown in the Estate with just under 200 acres of vines at Pauillac in the Médoc. Cabernet Sauvignon (83 %), Merlot (14 %) and Cabernet Franc (3 %) are the three varietals grown by them.
The 2009 vintage has been considered highly successful vintage of the last decade, although Bordeaux producers have generally been creating a lot of hype around their vintage in the recent years, presumably as a business strategy. Robert Parker has been particularly impressed by this vintage and had even recommended buying and storing wines of 2009 from several other producers- in the Second to the Fifth growth category, at the magical tasting of 20 Bordeaux wines last month at the Winefuture international wine conference in Hong Kong.
For some of our earlier articles on these labels, please visit
2005 Mouton-Rothschild Labelled
Prince Charles’s Painting on Mouton’04 label
Subhash Arora |