Hey.
Chateau Margot is no doubt one of the most legendary crews.
People often confuse the Chateau with the Appalachian itself because the association
between the two is so strong.
Margot is an estate, a land characterized by the small pebbles and gravels which are
deposited by the Guerron River.
The style of the Chateau Margot is delicate, elegant with a certain finesse.
It's a red wine made essentially of Cabernet Sauvignon, almost 75%, with touches of Merlot,
Cabernet Franc, and also Petit Verdeau, which is quite a rare variety, and which is what
gives this extraordinary wine its density, structure and length on the palate.
Margot has never been so margot, I mean it's achieved a sort of subtle balance, a sensuality
with a quality which is not a velvety but truly taffeta, very full and almost a unique
suppleness index, it's dense but with an amazing sensuality.
I am lucky enough to have tasted many Margot vintages, I've been a regular visitor to the
property and have followed its progression through the years.
When I think of the 59 Margot, for example, it brings back incredible memories.
Among the more recent vintages, I really appreciated the 86, for example, an excellent wine.
The 90s as well, a much talked about vintage, which gave some very mature Cabernet an incredible
roundness.
It's a wine which has always, it's very accessible, Margot with its good humour and
its refined quality.
It's the epitome of aristocracy, yet accessible at the same time, which makes it an extremely
attractive wine.
Thank you very much.
The story of my father is almost an odyssey in itself.
I know that sounds corny for a Greek person, but he left his home country at 18 years old,
launched his professional career in Burma, China, India and Pakistan, and didn't return
to France until 1958.
In 78, obviously, he bought Chateau Margaux, which sadly turned out to be the end of his
career because he died three years later, at the young age of 65.
He fell in love with this place straight away.
Even though the chateau had already been on the market for two years, he understood immediately
the history, the potential and the strategic location of the site.
Actually, he wasn't particularly fond of wine, but he liked getting back to basics,
to the earth and stone.
And Margaux was obviously the ultimate expression, the ideal symbol of these things.
This room is called the Wine Library.
It's where we store a collection of old bottles, a collection which we continue to supplement
with more recent additions.
The oldest bottles date back to the 19th century.
It's always very moving to come here, because it represents the whole history of the chateau
and of the property.
The records go back almost two centuries, although the history of the property is far
longer than that.
Unfortunately, we don't have any bottles dating from before the middle of the 19th century.
The estate exists since about the 9th century.
The traces are scarce, but we know the chateau Margaux was a stronghold at the time of the
Viking invasions.
In the 13th century, a major quarrel broke out between France and England.
The main point of contention was the possession of the region of Aquitaine.
The Duchess Allianor, who was the Duchess of Aquitaine and had been married to the King
of France, got divorced and remarried the King of England.
By right of the second marriage, Aquitaine belonged to England.
This prompted the start of a long war, which lasted almost 100 years.
According to some records, chateau Margaux was one of the many fortified castles which
officially belonged to the King of England.
What we know is that at that time they were already making wine.
We don't know exactly when they started, but certainly by that period, 12th or 13th
century, wine was being made.
They had probably already understood the advantages of certain plots of land over others.
It said, the true history of viticulture, the real successes, I mean, came later, starting
from the beginning of the 17th century.
It was at this moment in Bordeaux that people started to make a new sort of wine known by
the English as New French Claret.
These new wines, the New French Claret, were coarser, more powerful, made using a new winemaking
process similar to the one we use today.
Basically it consists of leaving the juice to mature with the skin of the grapes for
a relatively long time, several days.
This lapse of time is the result of countless tests, a process which has provided us today
with the deeper knowledge of our land, the experience to know which techniques should
be used for which grape variety, and for which type of soils.
It's an accumulated mass of knowledge which is invaluable to us today.
Our production goes back through a number of vintages.
You can see them laid out here, 1916, 1920.
When you think of what was happening at that time, obviously it's pretty impressive, right
up to these old vintages from the 19th century, some of which are of an incredible quality.
I'm thinking in particular of the 1893, and the oldest bottles, 1848, which was a fantastic
vintage.
When you think that they're almost 150 years old, it's actually quite fascinating when
you think that many of these vintages have a life expectancy which is significantly longer
than ours.
What is specific about Margo?
Each Grand Cru has its plot of land.
I don't think there's any one thing particular here.
But you've just achieved a certain harmony.
For our family, Margo refers to 200 hectares, Chateau Margo, 80 hectares of red and 12 hectares
of white.
Margo is located in the south of the Medoc, 30 kilometers north of Bordeaux.
The climate we have here is very mild for Bordeaux because we're very close to the sea, and
we also have the river, the Gironde, which is only 1.5 kilometers away.
So the climate here is very gentle, mild, less continental than the Liborne.
At Chateau Margo, we have a mosaic of different types of soil.
We call palu soils, which you find in areas where there were formerly prairies or corn,
and then the famous gravelly soils of the Medoc.
And in these different soils, there are a range of different vines.
Our staple here is the Cabernet Sauvignon, which makes up about 80% of the Margo vineyards.
The Cabernet Sauvignon is planted on all of the gravelly zones of the estate.
We also have some growing in the shale.
There are plots which harvest later, but the quality is good.
They produce some very powerful wines.
And then we have the merlots, of course, which are mostly planted in the Argileaux calcareous
zones.
Some of the merlots grow in the gravels, but only a few.
We also have a few patches of Cabernet Franc planted in the plots with a mixture of clay
and gravel.
And lastly, patches of Petit Vadoe, which are planted in the sandy areas, often more premature.
Here at Margo, the planting of the vineyards tends to be very dense, with 10,000 plants
per hectare, one per square meter.
Here at Margo, we adhere to a pretty traditional approach to winemaking, which means complete
treatment of the soils.
As you can see here, some plots are full of weeds which have grown up, so we're working
around the stems of the wines.
Basically, we try to combine the best elements of old techniques with the best of the new.
The harvest at Margo takes about 12 to 13 days, with about 200 to 220 people.
Those 220 people are divided into five teams.
Each team consists of a leader and various assistants who are there to manage the team,
but also, more importantly, to advise the grape pickers.
As of this year, we have started harvesting into trays which are 15 centimeters deep.
They only really hold one layer of grapes.
This makes it easy for us to supervise the quality of the picking.
It also means that the grapes are placed immediately into the trays, taken to the cellars, and
transferred into the destemming machines without being handled at all.
So they go into the trays and then directly to the cellars.
12 to 13 days for the harvests, in general, we start with the merlot.
The early merlots, then the merlots here in the enclosure.
After that, normally comes the Cabernet Franc plot.
That's only one.
And then the plots with the younger Cabernet Sauvignon vines.
And then the larger Cabernet Sauvignon plots and the graves.
And then we finish with the Cabernet Sauvignon vines in the enclosure behind us now, and
the Cabernet Sauvignon in front of the château.
As a general rule, the petit verre d'eau comes in in the last three or four days of
the harvest, either between the Cabernet plots or after the Cabernets.
Once the pallets are loaded onto the tractors, they're carried to the cellars.
In the cellars, the pallets are offloaded from the trailer.
Then the grapes are transferred off the pallets.
They're placed onto a table.
This is raised up to a certain height.
From where they're tipped onto a sorting table.
Here they undergo a simple control, then the destemming machine.
The destemming machine serves to separate the grapes from the stems.
Here we don't harvest the whole bunch, we're not in burgundy.
So the stems are put to one side.
The grapes and the juice fall into a small tank.
The tank is transferred to the vat room.
It's carried over the top of the vats either on a conveyor belt or on a set of rails.
We never use a pump to transfer the harvest into the vats.
A good selection needs to be made at the start with a clear separation between grapes and
different qualities.
We know each of our plots intimately and are aware of the zones within each plot where
the quality might vary.
We also have the capacity to process the fruit of each small zone separately.
This is what enables us to be precise in our final selection process and to continue to
make better and better blends.
So here we are at the wooden vats.
This is undoubtedly the most important place because this is where the grapes are transformed
into wine.
In each of the vats, the wine needs to be regularly pumped over because the grape juice
is originally white.
When you want to make a red wine, you have to extract the color from the skin.
We leave the skin as well as the pips together with the grape juice through the fermentation
process.
It's during this maceration period that the color and the tannins diffuse into the juice.
In the fermentation vats that you see here, the juice is fermenting and floating in it
is the ma, which consists of the pips and the skins of the grapes.
Each vat is tasted daily in order to control the evolution of the wine and the quality
of the tannins.
We use the tasting sessions to decide when to stop the maceration.
There is one further stage between the running off and the barreling, the malolactic fermentation.
This involves transforming the malic acids in the wine into lactic acid.
After this, the wine is almost perfectly stable.
It's only after the malolactic fermentation that the wine will finally go into the barrels.
The barrels will be racked for the first time at the end of February and after that we start
the blending process.
So we have about three months of testing, during which we get a clear idea of the quality
of each lot and can reflect on the final composition of each of the wines we make.
The premium wine, the pavilion rouge.
Here we are in the coupe reach.
For a long time now, we've had an employee on site making our barrels.
He only supplies about 25-30% of our annual needs, but what is important for us is to
have someone on board who really understands the wood.
We only use French wood.
The quality of the barrel depends on the quality of the lumber from which it's made, but also
on how the wood is heated during the fabrication process.
So the fact that we have a coupe reach on site, as well as a toasting workshop, means
that we have an intimate knowledge of what happens during the fabrication and we're better
placed to negotiate with other distributors.
What the barrel contributes to the wine is that it stimulates certain oxidation-reduction
reactions during the aging of the wine.
The barrel lets in some air which causes the tannins to transform as the wine is aged,
and this softens up the structure, which is what we're looking for.
What's more, a new barrel will also give off certain aromas which add to the complexity
of the wine.
We're currently in the first year's cellar where we have the latest vintage, which has
been in the barrels for six months now.
We keep both the premium wine, the Chateau Margot, and the second wine, the Pavillon Rouge,
in the same cellar.
The blending was done about two months ago now and this latest vintage was then presented
at a tasting for the buyers.
One harvest fills about 1500 barrels.
One third of it is used for the Chateau Margot.
Each barrel contains 225 litres, which is 300 bottles.
For the premium wine, the Chateau Margot, we use new barrels every year, whereas with
the Pavillon Rouge, we only use 50% new barrels in order to obtain the right balance between
the flavours in the wine and those that come from the new wood.
The wine sits in the barrels for 67 months.
During these six months, the barrels are kept with the bung at the top.
The bung is the glass part, which sticks out from the barrel.
At the beginning of the ageing period, the new wood absorbs a lot of wine.
The wine at this stage still contains quite a lot of gas, so the new wine will go down
into the barrel.
To make up for the dropping level, we add wine twice a week, so the barrel is always
full and there isn't too much surface oxidisation.
When the wine has been racked for the second time, about six months after barreling, all
the barrels are transferred into the second year cellar, where the ageing process continues
for another year.
The blending is a very exciting moment, because we make important decisions which will distinguish
the wine from others.
The decisions are obviously very subjective, because they're based on taste.
There are no analytical tests to judge the differences between a good and a mediocre
wine.
Only by tasting it can you tell the difference, and tasting, as we all know, is a subjective
exercise.
That's why I would hate to have to make these decisions alone.
Here we have a small team of four to five professionals.
We get together once, twice, three times, four times if it's necessary.
We taste all of our wines, discuss them, and then come to a consensus on what each wine
should be made of.
The first joy of tasting wine is in the nose.
These young wines, especially this one, have a very fruity nose, very pure, clean.
In the mouth, young wines tend to be very fresh, with a nice density.
However, that density should not be accompanied by a sensation of dryness in the mouth, or
an excessively tannic character.
The best, the greatest wines, are those that manage to have a lot of tannins, but tannins
that aren't too tannic.
That seems very confusing, but it becomes clear in the mouth, because it gives you a
general impression of something which is powerful, yet delicate.
In the last few centuries, Bordeaux has seen good times and bad times.
At this time, Bordeaux was going through one of its big crises, partly because they had
some disastrous years, 71, 72, 73, 74, were all very bad vintages, but also because of
the widespread economic crisis.
As I've always had an optimistic character, I went for it.
I was helped, obviously, by the truly extraordinary team of people whom my father had brought
together, and who doubled their efforts to rally round.
We were aware, obviously, that my father's death might cause a whole new set of problems
for Margot.
In 1982, we had an incredible year, both in terms of quantity and quality.
We had never seen results that good in such a quantity.
And at the same time, the dollar was going up all the time.
At one point, we were at 10 francs to the dollar.
In those days, we still had the franc.
A very important man named Bob Parker.
We know him.
We always refer to him.
It's very banal, but we owe him a great deal.
He had started to become very interested in France, the food and the wine.
When he came here to visit his fiancee in 1982, he started a journal in which he wrote for
the American public.
Everybody should be falling over themselves to buy up this 1982.
We haven't seen a vintage like this in 10 years.
So, everything started to take off.
Volume, demand, the American market went crazy, but so did the traditional markets, the UK,
Germany, Belgium and Scandinavia.
The fact is that over the last 30 years, we've been enjoying a fantastic period, and this
gives us the opportunity to go one step further in our quest for excellence.
Mouton Rothschild, it's the sunniest of the
Poillac estates.
We're completely on the left bank.
The site sits on a layer of light, stony soil, a mixture of base and chalk, an argilo calciarous
base with pebbles, guzzi and gravels.
The strip of land overlooks the estuary, the closer you are to the hemisphere, the better
the site.
Also, once you leave Poillac and you get to the Poulellele side, there is La Fite Hill
and then Pancane, which is an extension of Mouton Rothschild.
So with this chalky base over the deep gravel, Mouton also produces very opulent wines, very
rich, they develop a slight smoky flavour with thyme.
Nobody recognised the quality of this wine at first, it became known in about 73.
The Baron of Philippe de Rothschild in his day and now his daughter Philippine have always
worked and continue to work enormously hard for this date, the chateau, and its reputation.
Every year a painter comes to create an image for the label, it gives the wine an extra collector's
touch.
I have some delightful memories, especially of the Baron Philippe de Rothschild, who brought
about the 20th century revival of Mouton.
From time to time we would share a few moments together in the library of the chateau, tasting
wines, some incredible vintages.
I remember the 1945, which is an historic vintage for lots of reasons, but particularly
because it produced a Mouton Rothschild of a density which continues to be extremely
interesting even now.
At the same time you sense the power of the very mature tannins.
It's a wine which has already lived a number of years and I believe will survive another
few generations yet, so it's a real reference, 61, among the more recent vintages, 86 for
example, or the 2000 vintage, with a sculpted label almost etched into the bottle in gold
with a Mouton ram.
It's extraordinary.
We're talking about the 45, I've never had the chance to try it.
One day I hope to be able to taste the legend.
As for the Mouton Rothschild 50, I didn't expect such a young wine, such concentration,
such a rich bouquet of aromas, there were hints of cedar, chocolate, tobacco, it was really
unique.
I can think of lots of vintages.
I've tasted 82, I've tasted a 61, a 59, but the 50 really stands out as an incredible
memory because I absolutely wasn't expecting such a great wine.
In 1922 Mouton was, like most of the other Bordeaux-Crues, pretty well a disaster area.
You have to understand that this peninsula in the north of Bordeaux had no electricity
or water.
People lived primitive lives, they were still living in the middle ages.
And when my father arrived, the first thing he did was to talk about hygiene.
Everything was dirty.
The way the wine was made was far from hygienic.
He renovated the house, the chateau, he actually created a chateau which didn't exist.
People talked about chateau Rothschild, but they were talking about the wine because in
reality the house hardly existed.
It was almost impossible to live in Mouton in 1922.
We talk about improvements, but he did more than that, he revolutionised the place.
He was a revolutionary, a pioneer and a revolutionary in technological terms.
Obviously, the famous bottling at the chateau which he, well, I wouldn't say invented, the
idea existed, certain crew had the idea of finishing the wine and bottling it directly
at the chateau, the responsibility going to the chateau as opposed to the old system where
the wine merchants in Bordeaux bottled the premium wine.
It was an unfair system because they placed their names on the labels larger than that
of the chateau.
The modern day significance of the chateau comes from this shift of bottling at the chateau.
It was a really major event for the people of Bordeaux.
In 1855, Mouton was classified as the first of the second Grand Cru.
They didn't know how to classify Mouton because there was no chateau.
In the 19th century, there was nothing here.
At Maugot, at La Tour, at La Fite, they had facilities, facilities which could be referred
to as chateaux.
That wasn't at all the case at Mouton.
There was just a sort of farm yard.
Later, my father said to himself, now I've founded a museum, now I've got to where I
am today.
There's no reason why Mouton shouldn't be a Premier Cru, which was completely true
given that Mouton was selling on the market as a Premier Cru.
They say the real law is the law of the market.
And on the market at the time, in 1960, 65, 70, Mouton was sold like a Premier Cru.
The same price, sometimes more expensive, depending on the vintage.
The price was even higher than some other Premier Cru.
So my father launched a campaign.
He worked hard and conscientiously for the reclassification of Mouton.
And he was successful, obtaining a decree signed by Jacques Chirac himself when he was
Minister of Agriculture in 1973.
He signed a decree naming Mouton as a Premier Cru alongside La Fite, La Tour, Maugot and
Au Brion.
My father was an artist, an intellectual.
He always brought wine and the arts together.
He always said that Mouton should be a centre for art and beauty.
So he created the museum.
He instigated the famous labels, which I continue to produce, with illustrations by different
painters, where possible a well-known artist.
In any case, it has to be work I like, which is interesting and which is in some way symbolic,
either generally or specifically, if the painter or Mouton, or both.
I think that's one of the most important things, I can tell you.
For my father, art and wine were one and the same, two faces of one coin.
For him, making a great wine was an art form, it was the work of artists.
For him, the people who worked here and who continue to work here, growing and manufacturing
the wine are artists.
And in that, I think he was absolutely right.
We are at the centre of the Mouton Rothschild venue.
Mouton Rothschild, classified as a Médoc-Premier-Cru, is located in the commune of Poyac.
The name Mouton comes from the old French, Mouton, meaning small hill, and over time,
it changed to Mouton, and from here you can see clearly the hills.
Now we're going to go up this hill, which we share with our cousins at Lafitte.
It's exceptional and very characteristic of the region.
We are currently on a plot of Cabernet Sauvignon.
As it happens, this is the oldest Cabernet Sauvignon plot on the estate.
It was planted in 1898 and has never been replanted.
So among these vines, there are some very old plants.
The principal grape variety in terms of Mouton Rothschild, well, the Médoc in general, but
particularly at Mouton, is the Cabernet Sauvignon.
The Cabernet Sauvignon variety grows well in the heat, and is especially suited to the
soil we have here, consisting of a mixture of small stones and sand, which acts as an
efficient filter, as well as absorbing a lot of heat.
These are the optimal conditions for the Cabernet.
Of course, we also have three other grape varieties in smaller proportions.
Firstly, the Merlot, which represents 12% of the Mouton vineyards, not huge, but nonetheless
a significant quantity.
The Cabernet Franck, which is another type of Cabernet, though not quite so structured
as the Cabernet Sauvignon, it represents 8% of our vines.
And then there's the Petit Verdeau, a very ancient variety, which tends to be slightly
forgotten, but which can be very useful for blending in small quantities.
In fact, these four grape varieties make up the staple varieties of the Médoc.
Here, in the zone of Poillac, the soil is typical of the Médoc, principally consisting
of stones, pebbles and gravel brought here by the Gironde, which is situated right behind
that little hill in Cartaner, sand and gravel.
And these soils are also very thick.
Where we are now, we probably have a depth of about five meters of gravel, and the roots
of the vine grow down through the pebbles and stones to find water.
The water table varies with the seasons, but is generally at a minimum of two meters and
a maximum of five meters.
So this land is obviously very well suited to the cultivation of the famous Cabernet Sauvignon.
Orientation is also an important factor for a vineyard.
What is particularly advantageous at Mutant Rothschild is that the slope of the land faces
directly south.
Obviously, this means that it is very well exposed, getting sun from morning to evening,
which helps the grapes to ripen fully.
This is particularly important in the more delicate years when we don't really have enough
sun.
The southern orientation of the land gives us a little advantage.
So here you go.
Well everybody knows what a bunch of grapes looks like.
It's made of a green part, which we call the stalker stem, and you'll see that during
the treatment of the harvest, this part is removed.
This is a bunch of Cabernet Sauvignon, typically small, and quite tightly packed.
The grapes are small, no?
They're not really very big.
The wine making grapes, be it Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Padi Vado, or even the Merlot,
which has slightly larger grapes, but still, they're tiny in comparison to grapes you
would buy in the market.
These are grapes which consist mostly of skin and pips.
There's a little juice, but not much.
And it's the solid parts, skin and pips, which will give the wine its structure, its framework,
all of the red structured character that you find in a good bottle of mouton.
They have a lot.
For you.
All that I can do
is write Minister's wife for Wales.
Oh really? Yes!
You will break up right here.
As you saw, we collect the harvest into open baskets.
The baskets hold about 10 kilos of grapes.
Each plot is harvested individually.
Each plot obviously has just one grape variety, either Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, or Cabernet
Franc.
These are Merlot vines, the last of the Merlot.
Obviously within the vineyard, there are plots with younger vines and plots with older vines,
so all of these are divided out.
The baskets full of raisins are brought here on small trays, and are then tipped on to
the sorting tables.
This is the first sorting table, which is where we eliminate the most obvious impurities,
very often the leaves, which you can see over there.
Even though the grape picker takes great care to put only the grapes into the baskets, the
baskets sit under the vines, which means that sometimes leaves fall, or very often the leaves
are stuck in the bunches.
So we take out these primary impurities.
You may also take out a few rotten grapes if there are any.
This year there haven't been any because we've had a remarkably good year.
Next the grapes are taken to the de-stemming machine, which separates the grape from the
stem, the green part.
What we're looking for for the winemaking process is the grape alone.
Because we're in Bordeaux and because we're in the Medoc, with grape varieties such as
the Cabernet Sauvignon and the Merlot, the stem is not very useful.
In some regions of France, and with other grape varieties, it can be useful to keep a portion
of the stems, because they can contribute to the constitution of the wine.
Here that's not necessary because the Merlot grape variety and the Cabernet Sauvignon as
well are naturally very tannic, very structured, so we work with just the grape and nothing
else.
So this is the final sorting process, and we're left with just the grape.
The stem has been removed.
These people will take out any last impurities which they might find.
Little bits of petticelle.
There aren't many, but still, they're scanning for tiny impurities so that we are sure to
be left with just the grape, perfectly pure.
The fruit which arrives at the end of this vibrating table is a bit like caviar, and these
grapes will then go directly into the vats.
This tank here, full of the pressed grapes, will be transported.
Not far will be emptied into this small vat.
And this transfer system means, as I was telling you, that the grapes are never pumped around.
The fermenting room has quite a special design, because it's a gravitational system.
As you can see, the reception area for the harvest is higher than the fermentation vats,
which is quite rare.
There are only a few wineries which use this model.
As I was saying, this tank is emptied while the other is being filled and the circuit
continues until the vat is full, and then we change to another vat.
This vat will be filled with grapes from one plot.
It's called the Efontanelle, that's the name of the plot that will be kept in this vat.
Once the vats are filled, for red wines, the grapes are placed into the vats' hole, which
means that we keep all of the grape, with the skin, the juice, the pips, etc.
Very quickly, the fermentation starts, which means that the yeast, which lives on the skin
of the grapes, starts to act as it comes into contact with the sugar in the grapes, transforming
it into alcohol.
This is the alcoholic fermentation.
Within 24 hours, the vat will be split into two parts.
The liquid or the fermenting juice underneath, with what's known as the mark floating on
top, the mark consists of the grape skins.
Our grapes, Cabernet Sauvignon Mello, have black skins, but white juice.
If you take a grape and press it straight away, the juice is white.
However, we make red wines, so we have to extract the color from the skin of the grapes
and mix it with the fermenting juice.
And this is done with a process known as pumping over.
That's what we're doing here.
We allow the juice to run off into what's known as the bi.
This big recipient, and then we pour it over the mark.
In this way, we sort of wash out the mark with the fermenting juice, which is hot.
The temperature is around 28 to 30 degrees, and little by little the color is extracted.
Once the fermentation is finished, we leave the vat as it is.
We leave it incubating, so to speak.
This means that we leave the mark, the grape skins, floating on the wine, because the juice
has now become wine, and the extraction continues, but much more progressively, over the space
of about three weeks, sometimes more.
This static phase of the extraction process allows us to determine the extent of extraction
necessary for each vat, depending on the quality of the grape and its plot, because each vat
corresponds with a specific lot and a specific grape variety.
The maceration phase is very important.
We taste the wine daily, ours is a tough job.
Every day, we taste all of the vats to find out how we're doing, especially in terms of
the extraction of the tannins.
After about two to three weeks, depending on the vintage, on the plot, and on the grape
variety, we'll decide to stop the maceration.
We taste all of the vats, in total there are 28 at Muton, and rather like a painter who
has 28 colors on his palette, we choose which of them should go into the premium wine, Muton.
Once we've chosen them, we will associate the chosen vats.
This is the blending process, after which the Muton Rothschild is finished.
At the same time, we will blend the second Muton Rothschild wine, known as Petit Muton,
for Muton Rothschild.
In the same way, all of the vats, which are very good, but which we decide for some reason
are not perfect, either they're not as concentrated as we'd like, or not as long on the palette
as we'd like, but they're still very good, these vats will go to make up Muton Rothschild's
second wine.
Once the blends have been finalized late November or early December, then we can start maturing
the wine in the barrels.
At first, when the wine is barreled, it is cloudy, it's rough, it comes straight from
the fermentation, so when you look at it, it looks very cloudy, and all of the little
particles which cloud the wine will sink to the bottom of the barrel.
This is the primary purpose of the barrels.
The barrel is not very tall, about 60 centimeters high, so during the first two to three months,
all of the sediment settles, a very gradual settling, forming what is known as the lyes.
And every three to four months, we carry out what we call racking, which means that we
will decant, rather like you decant a bottle, we decant each barrel.
Obviously, the whole process is entirely done by hand, separating the clear, lucid wine
from the lyes.
All this process carries on throughout the maturing stage for about 18 to 20 months,
after 24 months, it depends slightly on the vintage.
There's another important phenomenon which takes place in the barrels, a slow infiltration
of oxygen in very small doses, which helps in broad terms to stabilize the color of the
wine.
The wine is a deep red, in chemical terms, these colors need to combine with a few atoms
of oxygen.
Also in terms of the taste, it's not only the visual side, but the taste which is important
to us.
For the red wines, the most important thing is the structure, the framework.
The micro-oxygenation of the wine that happens naturally is the wine's mature in the barrels
helps to stabilize the wine, its color and its structure.
I think that today there's been a great deal of effort made in terms of production.
Today, we have the good fortune to work with some of the best anologists in the world.
We have a whole think tank of people working on the winemaking process, continually researching
the methods and processes we use in order to get a full understanding of things that
were once a mystery.
We had the recipe, but so many elements remained empirical.
We tended to do things in a certain way simply because that was the way they were traditionally
done, but we didn't actually understand the scientific reasoning behind them.
Today, we have a precise understanding of the process, which gives us winemakers much more
control both over the vineyard and the winemaking process.
As a result, we produce wines of quality which is universally recognized and which is notably
superior to that of the wines of the past.
Today's market is obviously significantly biased towards export.
France still represents 15% of the Mouton Rothschild sales market, but the export market takes
up the lion share of our commercial activity.
Today we're getting a relatively good balance between the Anglo-Saxon market, which has
traditionally been the principal target for sales of our premium wines, and the Asian
market, which represents an increasingly large portion of our international sales, in particular
in three countries, Japan, Korea, and more recently, China.
Mouton is, I always think, what do I do here?
I mean, I'm here obviously, I embody Mouton, this is my property, but still, Mouton is sold
out before harvest.
It's a symbol, there's more demand than we can satisfy.
It's very easy to sell Mouton Rothschild.
I mean, this is a crew which has become so famous around the world, in the Asian markets
they fight for it.
We only make a very small quantity.
People always say we make a lot of wine, but no, in terms of the world market, we make
a very small amount of Mouton Rothschild, especially because we're making less and less, our selection
process has become even more drastic, even more severe.
In conclusion, this really is an excellent vintage, the wines are superb.
I was looking at the Cabernet Franck, which is just behind us, and it already has an incredible
color.
So it looks set to be a great vintage, that much is clear, as for the style, it's always
difficult to predict, but in any case, there will be robust wines with a certain density
and texture.
Really, what more could you want?
That's all for this video, I hope you enjoyed it, and I'll see you in the next one.
Thank you.
You
