ON THE ROAD | Federico Moccia at Château Mouton-Rothschild
In September, Federico Moccia, Head of Wine Operations for the London Club, was invited to lend a hand with the harvest at Château Mouton-Rothschild. The visit came through trade supplier Hallgarten & Novum Wines to highlight its Cellar Series, which sources wines, often from older vintages, direct from Bordeaux châteaux
When we arrived at Mouton, the sun was beating down and the harvest was in full swing – it really was an uplifting sight to see. Though initially, we were squirrelled off below ground for a tour of the Rothschild Museum, a collection of wine-related art and artefacts housed in the old cellar. The exhibits include all the original artworks commissioned for the label of each vintage of Mouton – by Picasso, Lucian Freud, King Charles (or the Prince of Wales, as he was back in 2004), right back to the V for Victory label in 1945. Sadly, no photos were allowed – for that, I had to wait until dinner…
We dined at the château with members of the family, headed by co-owner Camille Sereys de Rothschild, and enjoyed a pretty impressive line-up of wines, including the 1998 and 2009 Mouton, Petit Mouton 2016, and the 2021 vintage of Mouton’s rarely seen white wine, Aile d’Argent. As a style, dry white Bordeaux is, to me, often overlooked. I love the freshness and silkiness – slightly aromatic but never too much. The best examples are elegant and mineral, yet with great ageing potential, and that was certainly the case with the Aile d'Argent.
If that was all pretty glitzy, the next morning brought us back down to earth, when we lent a hand with the harvest. They set us to work on a plot of Cabernet Sauvignon immediately behind the château. To be honest, they didn’t really give us much by way of instruction, but luckily it wasn’t my first rodeo. Though I have to say, I always forget just how tough picking is. We only did a couple of hours, just snipping off bunches, and I think I was quite slow. It’s not as if I was exercising much quality control either, but 2025 has been a good year, and all the grapes looked pretty healthy to me. Plus I had someone following me, picking up anything I missed, and when you see the diligence at the sorting table, getting rid of the stems and any green matter, and then the optical sorter – the grapes look like caviar by the time they head into the cellar to start vinification.
Overall, everyone seems pretty happy with 2025 – it’s already being talked about as sharing similarities with 2022. They could have done with a bit more rain, perhaps, but they got that little bit of sun at the end to plump up the grapes for harvest – it was 27˚C when we were there, and set to be the same across the following days, so they were confident everything would be picked by the end of the week.
Lunch was taken with the pickers – around 200 of them, from all over the world – and the family too. Two courses, with lots of Mouton-Cadet sloshing around. Our table had a special treat, though, when our hosts poured us each a glass from a plain, green, unlabelled bottle, and asked us to guess what it was. We could immediately tell it was an older wine, though still with richness and power. But you’ve got to remember that we were sitting at a big, long table, outside, at lunchtime – no-one is expecting to be drinking a legendary vintage, and nor would we expect to be. Though equally, no-one wants to downplay it, and suggest that it’s a 2002 cru bourgeois. Plus we were drinking it out of water tumblers, which made things a bit more tricky. I guessed at a mid-‘90s grand vin. It turned out to be 1982 Mouton. One of the all-time classics, a vintage when quality and quantity coincided – and my birth year. Wow.
It strikes me that Bordeaux as a whole is making more effort to find that connection with the market, via the people who sell the wine, that perhaps they lost a few years ago. Mouton doesn't need to be advertised, of course, but you feel them trying to find that connection, getting back to their roots. For a while, fine wine, and Bordeaux in particular, became a little bit too much about cellaring and investing. Mouton is not cheap, but it should be about opening and sharing bottles, first and foremost. It was a treat to do that here.
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