Battle of the Rothschilds: Lafite vs Mouton | Inside the Legendary Mouton Winery

In this episode of Our Poor Decisions, we're tasting two titans of the wine world, Lafitte and Mouton Rostraud. We'll try them both, give you some of the history, and share our impressions with you. In addition, we'll get our expert input from our sommelier Stacey. We decanted these two bottles four hours ago and I can't wait to compare them. You're really excited about this aren't you? I am so excited. This is going to be epic. Going into this video, do you have a favorite already? No, I don't think so. We're going to go in with an open mind. Let's do it. Lafitte and Mouton are some of the biggest names in the world of wine. Both Chateau are first growth Bordeaux wines and you'll find these legendary bottles on the wine list of some of the best restaurants around the world, where they are sometimes listed for as much as $10,000 per bottle. Today, we have two bottles of the fantastic 2005 vintage. 2005 is considered one of the very best vintages in Bordeaux so wines from this vintage are particularly sought after. Incredibly, both of these bottles retailed for more than $1,000 each. Stacey, welcome to our show. Thanks for having me. We are so excited having you here to share your thoughts on these two great wines. I'm super stoked about it. How often do you serve wines like the ones we're having today at your restaurant? Not nearly enough. These are a special vintage. They're going to be high-end so the people who are going to come in the door looking for something like this or celebrating something and they are prepared to spend a little bit of money as well. And they're going to be super expensive, right? They're going to be super expensive. This is, you know, low quantities. You're going to have supply and demand issues with getting them and again when you're talking about 2005 vintage of the century, vintage of the decade, the price goes up. This is one of the reasons why we wanted to do a show on these two wines. These are super special wines, really hard to get your hands on and yeah, this is going to be a treat. Bordeaux, one of the most famous and oldest wine growing regions in the world, is located on the west coast of France and is home to some of the greatest chateaux in the world. Lafite and Mouton, the two wines that we're trying today, are located next to each other in the Pauillac Appellation in the Médoc region of Bordeaux. The Lafite and Mouton vineyards are located on a hill and enjoy both great sun exposure and good water drainage. On one side of the hill you'll find Lafite and on the other Mouton. Their respective vineyards are in an ideal location in Bordeaux where they benefit from the deposits of minerals from the ocean that once used to cover this land millions of years ago. When we visited the Mouton winery, we learned that the grape clusters grow close to the ground near the trunk where there's the most energy. The rocks in the soil absorb the heat during the day and release heat during the night. Both wineries got their last name from the Rothschild family. The Rothschild name is famous from the European banking and traces its history back to Meyer Amschel Rothschild who started the banking business and sent his five sons to London, Paris, Frankfurt, Vienna and Naples. Chateau Brun Mouton was purchased by the English branch of the family and subsequently renamed Mouton Rothschild in 1853. On the other hand, Chateau Lafite was purchased by the French branch of the Rothschild family in 1868 and renamed Lafite Rothschild. It is amazing to me that these wines have been enjoyed in some form by guys like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson in the 1700s when he was a foreign ambassador in France. That just blows my mind. It's actually really fascinating to look at the bottle, especially the Mouton bottle, and every year they have a different label. In the late 20s, Chateau Mouton was the first Bordeaux to go to estate bottling. Everybody else used to just ship it out in big barrels and the negociants would bottle. So in the 20s they decided to do that and they had a specific art covered label to kind of commemorate this. They did this once until 1945 with the Allied victory. They put a big V label and they did another piece of art and since then they have had a different artist grace their label every year. So these are super famous artists, right? Picasso has graced their label, for sure. Prince Charles has graced their label, right? And this year that we're tasting, Giuseppe Pannone has done the label. So he is an Italian naturalist, which you can see just by looking at it, right? So he's talking about bringing out nature and the art in nature. There are grape vines on the front, the leaves in the little bit of green as you see them ripen, and then you've got the winemaker's hand or your hand reaching for the glass. So all of the art tends to have like a winemaking or a vineyard theme on there, but they've had some crazy famous artists over the years. So even if you don't like the wine, you can still collect the art. I'm just going to go ahead and stop you guys right here before you geek out too hard. Can we just dive right in? Let's start with the color. First thing I'm going to do is look in the glass. All right, what are you looking for? I look for the different colors as it gets to the rim. Tells me a little bit about concentration. It tells me about the temperatures it was grown in. Tells me if it's red or white. The whole thing about age and wine is that all of the stuff that makes wine, wine can clump together as it gets older and fall out of suspension. And when that happens, the color changes. It gets a little bit more garnet and orange. So it's safe to say I've never decanted a bottle of wine in my life and you decanted these bottles four hours ago. Why is that? Yeah, so I think that wines like these really benefit from air. You put them in the decanter, expose them to oxygen. A lot of the flavors are going to come out in the front. Do you agree with that, Stacey? Totally. Oxygen can be your friend with a younger, tight wine. It kind of opens it up, brings all the party. It's a really great tool when you've got a wine that might not be quite ready to drink yet. Wine's always ready to drink for me. All right, we've given these the eyeball test. Let's stick our noses in here and see what we snap. All right, okay. Mouton first. Okay. Mouton, it is. There's a lot going on in there. Yeah, this brings me back to like the Norwegian pine forest where I grew up. I don't know if I've ever smelled a pine forest that smelled like this before, but it makes sense that you'd smell wood, right? Both of these wines are aged in oak, so they're going to smell a little foresty, oaky, woody, sometimes vanilla-y. It's a little stinky. What do you get that could be stinky? A little bit of barnyard, little bit of earth, maybe a little bit of leather. Right, all of these are traditional markers for old world wines. You've got all that kind of old world brett and some of the real fun things that happen in French wineries. So barnyard, brett, all of those good things. Horsey, leather, these are all real traditional Bordeaux flavors and smells. Yum. So I used to ride horses when I was younger, so I thought that the smell seemed familiar. It was bringing back memories for sure. Nice. All right, now what about the Lafitte? I'm excited about this. This is like, talk about brand name, Lafitte. I think this is a little bit more muted. I would agree with that. Doesn't jump out of the glass quite as much. Nope. Probably because it's still a little young. So you think maybe Lafitte's need more time? I definitely think based on the nose, this one smells more ready to drink. We're getting more things from it. Just why you described decanting it, to get it to open up and get those aromas to come out. This one's still a little young, still a little tight. I'm glad that we have an expert here. So I get a pencil. So pencil lead is also something that you get from Cabernet Sauvignon, from Cabernet Franc, both grapes that are going to be in these wines. It's a little pencil shavings too, not just like lead, but back to that kind of oak, a little bit smoky. There's actually something a little bit like medium here too. You know, that could also be our barbecue outside. Yes, it could also be the steaks for dinner. Yeah. I feel like you got to tell us about what you have planned. Oh, we're going to have steaks with this one afterwards. All right. I'm excited. Let's, let's taste them. It's time. All right. He's been waiting all week for this, which I think is totally understandable by the way. I've been super excited as well. I can't wait to hear what you think about these. I'm excited to try them. I'm excited to see what the hype is all about. So which one are we going to taste first? I try the Mouton. Okay. Let's do the Mouton. All right. I was done waiting. I needed to go ahead and start drinking. That is pretty lovely. So that is just delicious. Let me just say it right now. I love the Mouton. It's definitely good. I would much rather put this money towards shoes or something if I had money like that to spend, but which I don't. That makes total sense. Hey, and quite frankly, a thousand dollars. It is kind of ridiculous. I, I'm happy to admit that. So we're going to try the Lafite. Ready? Let's do it. They taste really similar. You have to admit they taste similar. They are really similar. It makes sense that they're similar, right? They're the same vintage. They're from the same region in Bordeaux. They are literally from the same hill in Bordeaux. They're both growing on the same soil. They're looking at the same sun. They're getting the same ripeness, the same heat in the summertime. So it makes sense that they're similar. And these are both what, 80% Cabernet? Yeah, I think it's 81, 89%. And then there's a little bit of Cabernet Franc, a little bit of Merlot. And each of them has like 1% Petit Bordeaux. So it's a real similar build. It makes sense. Okay. That does make sense. So the Lafite tasted a little tighter to me, a little bit more tannic-y, maybe a little bit more acidic. I think it definitely could handle some more aging. Lafite for me needs a few more years and they both taste good now with that tightness. But I think they've got really room to grow. I could drink these again in 10 years and still be happy with where they are. I'm leaning towards the Mouton. All right, Stacey? I could have guessed that. I think they are both super delicious. I want to drink these again in like 5 and 10 years and find out. Right now, the Mouton is drinking better. It is a little bit more approachable. The Lafite shows more that it needs age. How about you? And I will tell you, I like the Mouton better. But I will agree with you that it might be flavored by the fact that I think the Lafite is too young and that it needs at least another 10 years. I would love to try them again in 10 years and see if we felt the same way. And so let us know what you think. Should we try these in 10 years from now? Should we try a different vintage? And if you've ever tried these wines, what do you think? Let us know what you think. Stacey, thank you so much for helping us out. Thank you for having me. This has been delightful.