1971 Château Mouton Rothschild Magnum 1.5L, Pauillac

Magnum, 1.5L. The Kandinsky label. Three available.

A 1971 Mouton in magnum is a birth-year bottle and a piece of the artist-label series. The 1971 vintage was small and low-yielding, and Pauillac was not where it shone. The Wine Advocate rated this 88 points and called it a medium-weight, charming example, fully mature. That is what it is: a beautiful, gentle, forty-five-year-old claret with a story on the label, in the format that ages best.

Where this bottle came from

Bought from a private collector, not off the open market. The people we buy from are ones we know, who bought on release and stored the wine properly for decades. Nothing enters our inventory without someone here looking at the bottle first.

In the glass

The published Wine Advocate note describes a classic Pauillac nose of cedar, blackcurrant and lead pencil, with a savoury, sweet, cedary profile, good freshness and ripe tannin. Expect a mature wine: gentle, perfumed, more about texture and scent than power. The magnum format means it has aged more slowly than the equivalent 750ml.

The details

• Producer: Château Mouton Rothschild
• Appellation: Pauillac, Médoc, Bordeaux, France
• Classification: Deuxième Cru Classé at the time of bottling. Mouton was promoted to Premier Cru Classé in 1973, the only revision ever made to the 1855 classification, so this bottle predates its First Growth status by two years.
• Vintage: 1971
• Format: 1.5L magnum
• Score: 88 points, The Wine Advocate
• Drinking window: now, fully mature

The label

The 1971 label is by Wassily Kandinsky, from a 1939 painting now held at the Centre Pompidou. Baron Philippe de Rothschild began commissioning a different artist for each vintage with the 1945, and the run since includes Braque, Dalí, Miró, Chagall, Picasso, Warhol and Bacon. The artists were paid in wine.

Serving

Stand the magnum upright for two days before opening, then decant slowly off the sediment about forty-five minutes ahead. Serve at 62 to 64°F. This is a wine for a table of six who will pay attention to it, not a wine to open casually.

About the estate

Baron Philippe de Rothschild took control of Mouton in 1922 at the age of twenty and changed Bordeaux twice over: he made château bottling compulsory at the estate, ending the merchant practice of bottling elsewhere, and he spent fifty years campaigning for the reclassification that finally came in 1973. The estate motto changed with it, from "First, I cannot be. Second, I do not deign to be. Mouton I am" to "First, I am. Second, I used to be. Mouton does not change."

Common questions

Is a 1971 still good to drink?
Yes, with the expectations that come with a fifty-five-year-old wine. It is fully mature and will not improve further. Drink it, do not cellar it.

Why a magnum?
Wine ages more slowly in a magnum because there is less oxygen relative to the volume of wine. A 1971 in magnum is a fresher proposition than the same wine in a standard bottle, and it is the format collectors look for in older vintages.

Is this a First Growth?
Mouton is a First Growth today, promoted in 1973. This 1971 was bottled while the estate was still ranked a Second Growth.

Three magnums. Once it is gone we cannot reorder it. Ships from our Florida cellar. Browse more rare and limited vintages.