Ch. Mouton Rothschild
Aile d'Argent
Bordeaux Blanc
2019

The producer

Mouton-Rothschild has a long history with wines having been made on the land since Roman times. In 1853, the estate was acquired by the Rothschild family, but it was not until Baron Philippe took charge of the running of the estate in 1922 that things started to change most importantly with his tireless campaigning for the estates promotion to First Growth status.

Arguably overlooked in 1855, when the chateau was classified “only” as Second Growth, Baron Phillipe began his “First I cannot be; Second I do not deign to be; Mouton I am” campaign that placed Mouton in everybody’s mind as a deserving First Growth. Eventually promoted to First Growth in 1973 Baron Phillipe changed the song to “First I am; Second I was, but Mouton does not change.” The 1973 upgrade of Mouton-Rothschild to First Growth status is pretty much the only alteration ever to have been made to the 1855 classification.

In 1945, Baron Phillipe was also the one to start commissioning artists to design the wine labels – each vintage’s label would bear a different artists work. Artists have over the years included Salvador Dali, Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon. Pablo Picasso designed the label for the 1973 vintage. Baron Phillipe was also the one to introduce chateau bottling in 1924, at the time a true novelty in the region.

The wine

Aile d’Argent is a Château Mouton Rothschild wine and was born thanks to a beautiful history. Indeed, wanting to reconnect with an old Medocan tradition, Philippine de Rothschild decided to plant on its soil, in the early 1980s, a few hectares of white grape vines. Initially, it was Filipino’s father, Baron Philippe de Rothschild, who loved to tell a tale he had imagined for his daughter, whose heroine was a magical teapot. When the war took place, the Baron was imprisoned, and it was during those years that he wrote this tale, which he called Aile d’Argent la Magique.

Its sandy-gravelly terroir is planted with Sauvignon Blanc (53%), Sémillon (35%), Sauvignon Gris (11%) and Muscadelle (1%), with a density of 9000 feet per hectare. The wine is raised for 50% in new oak barriques.

For the tasting, Aile d’Argent is at once rich, complex and elegant. Although produced in very small quantities, it has become in a few years a reference for lovers of large dry white Bordeaux.

We choose our wines based on a range of criteria (see how we choose our wines) of which critic scores is just one. Rather than simply highlight the best score to promote a wine, our average critic score is calculated from the scores provided by several respected wine critics, who we follow for specific regions. They do not represent all critic scores and, wherever possible, we try and give more weight to more recent reviews. Where appropriate we consider market-based scores like Global Wine Score or Wine Searcher Average scores.

As a rule, we look to offer wines that achieve a 92/100 average critic score or better and frankly a lot of very good wines simply don’t make the cut. As a high-end provider we want to reflect that positioning in the quality of wines we offer. Such wines are only a tiny fraction of those generally on offer in the market. We believe that an average score is a more conservative and representative approach, but it is still subjective and only offered as a guide to our customers, who will (and should) do their own research. We will add individual critic scores to our website in the future.