Château Mouton Rothschild· Pauillac

"Premier je suis, second je fus, Mouton ne change." First I am, second I was, Mouton does not change. Baron Philippe de Rothschild fought for decades to have his estate promoted, and in 1973 Mouton became the only château ever elevated to First Growth status after 1855, the single revision the classification has known.

The Rothschild family still owns it, with Philippe Dhalluin directing the cellar, and the wine remains the most emphatically Cabernet of the First Growths. From deep Günzian gravel studded with quartz on the high plateau, in a vintage like 2020 it runs to ninety percent Cabernet Sauvignon, opulent, dark, raised entirely in new oak and built to live fifty years.

Two things make Mouton unmistakable: that towering Cabernet spine, and the artist label commissioned anew each year. I allocate it to the patient and the serious. It is not a wine to open young, and it is not a wine I let go lightly.