Art & Wine: Château Mouton-Rothschild, 2025

“It’s gotta be Banksy,” I muttered aloud, to nobody in particular.

For the record, I was not being entirely serious.

Nevertheless, the joking naivety of my whispered statement concerning the identity of the artist on the label of the 2022 vintage from Château Mouton-Rothschild – at that time, still a closely guarded secret – betrays my fragile knowledge of the world of modern and contemporary art.

I am no modern-art expert, and it might not surprise you to learn what little knowledge I have has been accumulated through my life in wine. While I once thought – perhaps thirty years ago – that wine was little more than fermented grape juice in a glass, I have since learnt it to be so much more. Allow wine into your life (should that read to take over your life?) and it opens a portal, one which leads to a deeper understanding of farming, agriculture, biology, chemistry, geography, geology, history and human culture.

Which of course includes art, in all its forms.

Indeed, the more time you spend in Bordeaux, the more exposed you are 20th-century art and sculpture, from the myriad pieces dotted in and around Château Smith-Haut-Lafite, Château Ducru-Beaucaillou, Château d’Arsac and the like, to single large installations, like those of Bernar Venet – one artist whose works I am familiar with – at Château Haut-Bailly and Château Dassault.

By the way, if you are wondering what makes Venet’s metal sculptures so recognisable, even to my untrained eye, take a look at the 2007 label for Mouton-Rothschild; it bears an image of an archetypal Venet work.

Talk of Venet brings us neatly back to Mouton-Rothschild and its labels, undeniably the best-known wine and art association in existence. This association can be traced back as far as the 1924 label, designed by Jean Carlu (1900 – 1997), although it was the V for Victory label, commissioned for the 1945 vintage to mark the end of World War II, which kick-started the programme of annually renewed artist labels. That first label was the work of Philippe Jullian (1919 – 1977), but since then the labels have featured original and reproduced works of art by Dali, Bacon, Picasso and other luminaries..

Late last year I was one of a number of lucky guests invited to Château Mouton-Rothschild to witness the unveiling of the artwork by the latest artist to have the honour of joining this roll-call of famous names, selected for the 2022 vintage. Looking around, other than the three Rothschild siblings – Julien, Philippe and Camille – who now run the property, and their director Jean-Emmanuel Danjoy, I saw very few familiar faces. Many if not the majority of those gathered around the low stage were, it seemed to me, from the world of art, rather than the world of wine.

Realising that, I decided not to mutter aloud my Banksy ‘tip’ again.

After all, sometimes it is better to keep quiet and be thought an idiot, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. At least, that is what some of my schoolteachers told me.

Instead, when the artist was revealed – to gasps of appreciation from the crowd – I joined in with the appreciative applause, safe in the knowledge that this was not Banksy. Unless, like Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne (revealing some non-vinous cultural linchpins here), the renowned French painter Gérard Garouste, a graduate of the École des Beaux Arts in Paris, has a secret life as a Bristol-based graffiti artist.