Mouton Rothschild 1973 — the story behind the Picasso bottle

Château Mouton Rothschild places a work of art on the label of its wine every year. Picasso, Chagall, Miró, Warhol, Dalí: the list of artists who have designed a Mouton label reads like a survey exhibition of twentieth-century art. The 1973 is exceptional: the label is based on a work by Pablo Picasso, as a tribute to the artist who died that year.

The artist label tradition

Baron Philippe de Rothschild took charge of Château Mouton Rothschild in 1922. He had always maintained close ties with the art world. In 1924 he invited the Cubist designer Jean Carlu to create that year's label, a revolutionary idea at the time that did not immediately catch on.

In 1945, the year of liberation, Baron Philippe established the tradition definitively. Every year, a different artist would create an original work for the label of the new vintage. Since then, Marc Chagall (1970), Joan Miró (1969), Georges Braque (1955) and Salvador Dalí (1958) have all appeared on the bottle.

The year 1973

1973 was a significant year for Mouton Rothschild for two reasons.

First, Pablo Picasso died on 8 April 1973. Baron Philippe de Rothschild decided to dedicate the vintage to him. He chose a watercolour from his own collection: a Bacchanale painted by Picasso on 22 December 1959. The work depicts festive figures in a classical Bacchanalian scene, a Roman celebration in honour of Bacchus, the god of wine.

The label carries the words: "en hommage à Picasso (1881-1973)." This was not a commission carried out by Picasso himself. It was an existing work from the Baron's collection, used with permission from Picasso's estate.

Second, Mouton Rothschild achieved its long-pursued classification change in that same year. After years of campaigning, the estate was officially elevated from Deuxième Cru to Premier Cru in 1973. It is the only time in the history of the 1855 Bordeaux classification that an estate has changed category. The new label carried the words: "Premier je suis, second je fus, Mouton ne change" — "First I am, second I was, Mouton does not change."

The wine itself

1973 was not a great Bordeaux vintage. The weather was unfavourable: too much rain before the harvest. The wines are fruity and approachable in style, but not of the calibre Mouton delivers in stronger years. Most bottles were drunk long ago.

That makes the 1973 all the more a collector's item for its label rather than purely for the wine.

Wine and art at Paskamer

The story of the Mouton Rothschild 1973 illustrates something central to Paskamer's approach: wine as a cultural object. Not only a drink, but a carrier of stories, of origin, of the people who have put something of themselves into it.

Wouter Aalst, owner of Paskamer, discussed this bottle as an example of how wine transcends the boundaries of its own discipline. A label by Picasso on a Premier Cru Bordeaux. Art you can open.

In our cellar reserves we hold bottles that tell comparable stories. Not always through art, but through origin, through age, through the winemaker who made them.