Blind tasting at Château Mouton Rothschild: a humbling experience!

September 17, 2010

Blind tastings can be so darn, well, humbling. Now, it is not every day that I taste Mouton Rothschild. In fact, for the past five or six years, I have tasted it perhaps once or twice a year, usually en primeur. On occasion with friends who crack open an older bottle, but that is rare. So when I visited Philippe Dhalluin, winemaking director at the estate, we went through six wines blind: just one was Mouton, and the other six were estates whose winemaking he also manages. All six are owned by Baron Philippe de Rothschild S.A. and include the famous Napa Valley vineyard Opus One, a partnership with Robert Mondavi and the Rothschild Company, as well as the celebrated Chilean Almaviva.  After we went through the wines, I made some hazardous initial guesses, all not quite right, except for – upon reflection – the Mouton. But that was it! Anyway, here it is: