Definition: Mouton Rothschild Wine Museum

The Wine Museum at Château Mouton Rothschild is a remarkable museum open to the public as part of the Château Mouton Rothschild tour.

The Rothschild family has a long tradition of passion for art. Baron Philippe de Rothschild inherited part of Baron Mayer Carl's (1820-1866) considerable collection, comprising nearly 5,000 works, spread across his two properties in Frankfurt. Although this was only part of the inheritance, the collection of 16th and 17th century German pieces alone justified the creation of a museum.

Baron Philippe de Rothschild set about restoring his entire estate from 1922 onwards, introducing full bottling at the château and personalising the bottles in the most original way possible, entrusting the decoration of each vintage to a different contemporary artist. Fifteen years later, with the help of his second wife, Baroness Pauline, he built up a collection of wine-related items, meticulously selected from all over the world, based on Baron Carl's beautiful silverware.

It was André Malraux who inaugurated the "Museum of Wine in Art" in 1962. The emblem of Mouton Rothschild was the highly symbolic "Augsburg ram", a 16th-century vermeil goblet, which was reproduced thirty-eight years later by Baroness Philippine de Rothschild to distinguish the famous screen-printed bottle of the 2000 vintage. Among the many items on display are a collection of Venetian glasses, an Indian jug encrusted with rubies, Egyptian, Greek and Roman antiques, tapestries, paintings and ivory carvings.

The collection has continued to grow, notably with several works created by great artists, vintage after vintage, now completed by Baroness Philippine de Rothschild with the same passion.