Winemaker Notes
The wine is a deep and dark, garnet red, shading slightly at the rim, while the complex nose displays notes of leather and wax with a slightly animal cast, all elegantly set off by a floral underpinning and attractive oak. The supple and precise palate shows good balance, with well-integrated tannins and an opulence that enfolds the structure. The flavors linger on a long, fruity finish.
Blend: 80% Cabernet Sauvignon, 10% Merlot, 8% Cabernet Franc, 2% Petit Verdot
About the Label Artwork
The Dutch painter Karel Appel (1921-2006) was born in Amsterdam and studied there from 1940 to 1943 at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. He had his first show in his native city in 1946.
He was inspired at the outset by Picasso, Matisse and Dubuffet, but his career really began with the excitement of the Cobra Group, which he founded in 1948. It included painters like Corneille, Alechinsky and Asger Jorn. His sculpture of the "Cobra-Bird" was made as the emblem of a movement which celebrated a new kind of baroque expressionism that had broken free from the post-cubist tradition.
The fifties and sixties marked the great flowering of Appel's talent and of his work, producing commissions and important awards that made him an international name. He painted murals for the Amsterdam City Museum and the Unesco Building in Paris, and won both the Venice Biennale and the Guggenheim Prizes.
Amsterdam, Paris, where he moved in 1950, and finally New York where he lives today, have all fuelled his imagination. Driven by a passionate curiosity he has walked their pavements, fascinated by the anarchy of their swarming crowds, the unexpected flotsam and jetsam of their streets. «The city's deafening din that howled about my head", wrote Baudelaire, and Appel recreates that howling with the natural elements of "Street Art", using every kind of material to help him: twisted planks, old iron, ceramics, collages made of wildly disparate objects, violently coloured oils and acrylics. "Savage Expressionism" was the phrase he has used himself: work of powerful originality, provoking the eye and the mind with a wild kind of joy, preserving and conveying all the thrill of creation. In recent years, in nudes and landscapes, he has turned to a more formal and serene style of painting but his original energy es undiminished.
Karel Appel is the first Dutch painter to illustrate a Mouton Rothschild label. For the 1994 vintage he has conceived a pair of drinkers performing a wild dance round a totem bottle, as if to liberate the spirit of the wine still imprisoned within.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
This is still youthful in appearance with dark ruby color. It sets an excellent example for the 1994 vintage with a spicy, toasty nose showing lots of black currants and tar. It's full-bodied, refined and chewy.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
After less than persuasive performances in two potentially great years, 1989 and 1990, Mouton-Rothschild appears to have settled down, producing fine efforts in recent vintages, culminating with the enormously promising, unquestionably profound 1995. The 1994 appears to be the finest Mouton-Rothschild made following the 1986 and before the 1995's conception. The wine exhibits a dense, saturated purple color, followed by a classic Mouton nose of sweet black fruits intermingled with smoke, pain grillee, spice, and cedar. Medium to full-bodied, with outstanding concentration, a layered feel, plenty of tannin, and rich, concentrated fruit, this wine is similar to the fine 1988. By the way, the Dutch artist, Appel, has created a gorgeous label for the 1994. Although Mouton-Rothschild can be among the most inconsistent first-growths, when this estate gets everything right, the wine can be as compelling as any produced in Bordeaux.
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Wine Spectator
Dark-colored, with intense aromas of blackberries, tar and spice, and toasted oak notes as well. Full-bodied, with very silky tannins and a chewy, ripe fruit-accented finish. An impressive Mouton.
One of the world’s most classic and popular styles of red wine, Bordeaux-inspired blends have spread from their homeland in France to nearly every corner of the New World. Typically based on either Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot and supported by Cabernet Franc, Malbec and Petit Verdot, the best of these are densely hued, fragrant, full of fruit and boast a structure that begs for cellar time. Somm Secret—Blends from Bordeaux are generally earthier compared to those from the New World, which tend to be fruit-dominant.
The leader on the Left Bank in number of first growth classified producers within its boundaries, Pauillac has more than any of the other appellations, at three of the five. Chateau Lafite Rothschild and Mouton Rothschild border St. Estephe on its northern end and Chateau Latour is at Pauillac’s southern end, bordering St. Julien.
While the first growths are certainly some of the better producers of the Left Bank, today they often compete with some of the “lower ranked” producers (second, third, fourth, fifth growth) in quality and value. The Left Bank of Bordeaux subscribes to an arguably outdated method of classification that goes back to 1855. The finest chateaux in that year were judged on the basis of reputation and trading price; changes in rank since then have been miniscule at best. Today producers such as Chateau Pontet-Canet, Chateau Grand Puy-Lacoste, Chateau Lynch-Bages, among others (all fifth growth) offer some of the most outstanding wines in all of Bordeaux.
Defining characteristics of fine wines from Pauillac (i.e. Cabernet-based Bordeaux Blends) include inky and juicy blackcurrant, cedar or cigar box and plush or chalky tannins.
Layers of gravel in the Pauillac region are key to its wines’ character and quality. The layers offer excellent drainage in the relatively flat topography of the region allowing water to run off into “jalles” or streams, which subsequently flow off into the Gironde.