The new Vat Room of Château Mouton Rothschild
On 16 June, Château Mouton Rothschild will inaugurate its new vat room, as well as an exhibition space for the artworks which have illustrated the labels of the legendary First Growth since 1945. The Château’s famous Museum of Wine in Art will also reopen on the occasion.
Baroness Philippine de Rothschild entrusted the project to the designer Richard Peduzzi and the architect Bernard Mazières, in consultation with Philippe Dhalluin, Executive Director for Châteaux Wines of the family company, Baron Philippe de Rothschild.
A sober front wall, a skilfully designed oak frame, two levels linked by slim metal pillars, a harmonious marriage of wood and steel set off by suspended lighting: at the cutting edge of technology, the vat room is intended, as Richard Peduzzi explains, to evoke the iconography of Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopedia. It is an elegant way of recalling that a great wine, as well as benefiting from the most advanced œnological research, remains as in the 18th century the result of work in the vineyard and winery, founded on perfect harmony between people, their tools and their environment. The 64 vats, of different sizes, correspond to the different parcels of the estate, helping to optimise both selection of the grapes and the blending of the wine.
The exhibition “Mouton Rothschild – Paintings for the Labels”, welcomed since 1981 in many of the world’s leading museums, has now found a home at Mouton. On two floors, the collection brings together major artists of our time, from Picasso to Jeff Koons, from Braque to Balthus and Francis Bacon. Their works, subtly arranged and lit to show them to their best advantage, are displayed in glass cases designed by Francis Lacloche. On the ground floor, visitors will discover the wine-and-gold colonnade specially designed for Mouton Rothschild by the painter and sculptor Rougemont.
“I, Mouton, do not change”. Inspired by this motto, Philippine de Rothschild has asked the two designers, with their taste and their talent, to write another page in the Château’s long history, renewing the link between wine and art already established by her father, Baron Philippe de Rothschild. Mouton may indeed not change, but it is constantly reinventing itself!
