Lowering The Boom On Bordeaux Labels

Chapter Seven. Part Three.
Next month marks the 24th anniversary of my life in the wine and spirits trade but my preoccupation with wine actually began about a dozen years earlier. In fact, by the time I bought a wine store in 1994 both my wine cellar and my liver were overflowing with classified Bordeaux.  Given my penchant for drinking mature claret you may find it hard to believe that I still own the very first first growth I ever purchased.

In 1985 I visited Sherry-Lehmann for three consecutive days before I finally summoned the nerve and the capital to purchase a bottle of 1982 Chateau Margaux. How different would my life have turned out if I used the money for something more practical – say repaying my student loan for example. I might be writing a blog about fiscal responsibility instead of wine and then what would I do with all those liver jokes.

In my very first wine blog I held a gun to that 36 year-old bottle and wrote, “Follow This Blog or the Wine Gets It!” I never pulled the trigger on that Margaux (not even figuratively) and it still holds a special place in my cellar and in my heart. Maybe I keep it because it was my first “grown up” wine purchase and drinking it would somehow signify the end of childhood. I figure if I give in and become a grown up I’ll have to do grown up things like pay off loans rather than buy expensive wines.

Chateau Margaux’s label, like so many Bordeaux labels, is built on the formidable foundation of history and conveys all the swagger of prestige. The 2015 vintage marks the 200th anniversary of the estate and is the first label to differ from the historic white version. In addition to the anniversary, the special silk screened bottle also commemorates the death of the property’s general manager Paul Pontallier, who spent 33 years at Chateau Margaux.

Château Beychevelle is another historic Bordeaux estate with a poignant label saga. In 1587 this beautiful property, which overlooks the broad Gironde River in St. Julien, was purchased by a well-decorated French admiral named Jean Louis de Nogaret de La Valette. As ships passed Chateau Beychevelle, sailors were expected to lower their sails in salute to the respected admiral. The name Beychevelle is derived from the French term baisse voiles which means “lower sails,” and the label portrays a ship doing just that in honor of the admiral.

In 1995 the BATF also lowered the boom, this time on the legendary Bordeaux premier grand cru estate, Château Mouton-Rothschild. Every year Mouton-Rothschild commissions a different artist to create its wine label and the artists are said to be paid for their efforts in cases of wine. The list of contributors reads like a who’s who of twentieth century artists and includes Jean Cocteau, Salvador Dali, Joan Miró, Marc Chagall, Pablo Picasso, and Andy Warhol.

The 1993 label featured a nude female form rendered by the artist Balthus (a pseudonym of Count Balthazar Klossowski de Rola). It created some controversy in America when puritanical do-gooders felt the subject matter, clearly a young girl, was no less than kiddie porn.

Bowing to pressure, the BATF rescinded label approval making it illegal to import bottles with the Balthus label into America. Baroness Philippine de Rothschild said, “If it’s not Balthus, it’s nobody,’ and we left the label blank for Americans. Tant pis, too bad for them.” (New York Times, March 2000). Even though Mouton-Rothschild recalled 30,000 bottles they refused to replace the artist’s work. Instead, they relabeled the America-bound bottles with an empty space where the offending sketch once lay.

Today, some 25 years after the Balthus label, Chateau Mouton Rothschild’s website has this to say about the controversy;

The drawing he made for Mouton Rothschild 1993 returns to  a recurrent motive in this work: the dreamy adolescent girl, wilful, graceful and fragile…All the hypnotic power of a style that is both limpid and full of mystery, leading us away to distant lands of fantasy and desire.

(It sounds like those puritanical do-gooders might have been on to something.)

Not long after I bought The Wine Seller I received my very first shipment of Bordeaux futures. I carefully pried the wooden slats from one of the cases and peeled away the paper surrounding a bottle. There, staring back at me through wispy tissue paper was the young girl created by Balthus. I was among a handful of wine merchants in America who received early shipments of the 1993 vintage before the label approval was rescinded and the bottles were forever banned from America.

Many factors contribute to a gratifying wine experience; the right food, the right atmosphere, the right companionship and even the right label. Keep in mind that wine is one of the few products on your dinner table that stays in its original packaging as you consume it. In the end, whether you choose a wine with a classic label or an outlandish label what really matters is what’s in the bottle, not what’s on the bottle.

What’s in a bottle of premier cru Bordeaux is usually pretty good which is why I drank all my 1993 Mouton Rothschild with the rare Balthus label. I also expect great things from my 1982 Margaux if only I could bring myself to grow up and drink it.