Chateau Mouton Rothschild 2000

From Brane-Mouton to First Growth

The estate was called Brane-Mouton when Baron Nathaniel de Rothschild, an English member of the banking family, bought it from Isaac Thuret in 1853 and renamed it Chateau Mouton Rothschild. It had been run down; the vineyard needed extensive replanting, and Thuret sold for less than he had paid 23 years earlier. Its earlier owners, the de Branne family, were among the first in the Medoc to plant Cabernet Sauvignon heavily, and some 19th-century Brane-Mouton vintages were reported to be pure Cabernet.

Two years later, in the 1855 classification, Mouton was ranked a Second Growth. Its old motto made the snub part of its identity: 'First I cannot be, second I do not deign to be, Mouton I am.'

In 1922 Baron Philippe de Rothschild, then 20, took over the estate. He was the first Bordeaux owner to insist on bottling his entire crop at the chateau, and he hired the poster artist Jean Carlu to design a special label for the 1924 vintage to announce it. In 1926 he built the Grand Chai to hold the bottled wine. After decades of lobbying, Mouton was promoted to First Growth starting with the 1973 vintage, the only change ever made to the 1855 classification, and the motto became 'First I am, second I used to be, Mouton does not change.'

The artist labels, and the year without one

In 1945 Baron Philippe marked the Liberation of France with a 'V for Victory' label, and from then on Mouton commissioned an artist to create the label for almost every vintage. The roster runs through Dali, Miro, Chagall, Braque, Picasso, Warhol, Bacon and Hockney. The ram, the estate's emblem, appeared again and again, from Carlu's art deco version of 1924 to Raymond Savignac's playful one for 1999.

For 2000, in what the estate calls an exceptional departure from the tradition, Baroness Philippine, who ran Mouton after her father's death in 1988, commissioned no painter. She chose instead to make the bottle itself the collector's item, decorated with one of the treasures of the chateau's Museum of Wine in Art: the little 'Augsburg Ram,' a chased silver-gilt drinking vessel made around 1590 by Jakob Schenauer, a German master goldsmith.

The glassmaker B.S.N. spent four months developing a new way to enamel in relief to capture the original's luster, using custom-made tools and a complex method for firing the gold and enamel. A gold ring around the black capsule copies the engraving on the ram's collar. The arms, name, vintage and the Baroness's signature were screen-printed in gold, and the heavy bottle was slightly reshaped at the shoulder into a truncated cone. The design was unveiled on October 22, 2002, at a wine trade show in New York.

2000: a rescue in late July

The year did not begin like a great one. After a cold January and a mild March, Bordeaux suffered one of its worst mildew outbreaks in decades. Flowering was late, and June and July were cool, damp and short of sun. Then, from the end of July, came two months of warm, dry, sunny weather, dry enough that many vineyards saw drought-like conditions in August.

Bordeaux's harvest officially began September 20 and for most estates was finished by October 10, in near-perfect weather. Mouton picked from September 22 to October 6. According to one longtime critic, several chateaux recorded the highest tannin and extract levels in their history, and 2000 was the first vintage in a decade to excel on both banks of the Gironde.

The final blend of the 2000 Mouton was 86% Cabernet Sauvignon and 14% Merlot, raised in 85% new French oak, according to one critic. The estate's own note compared its richness and harmony to the 1986. It was also among the last vintages made the old way: until 2000, one critic writes, Mouton commonly made its grand vin from 80% to 85% of the harvest; today the share is closer to 50%.

Is it the wine, or the bottle?

Critics are divided. Robert Parker called the bottle 'perhaps the most beautiful packaging ever on a Bordeaux bottle' and the wine 'a top-flight Mouton Rothschild, eclipsed only by the 2006 and 2009,' scoring it 96+ in 2010 with a drinking window of 2015 to 2050. In 2019 his colleague Lisa Perrotti-Brown gave it 97, praising its 'phenomenal length' while feeling it was still 'holding something back.' Jeb Dunnuck rated it 98 and Wine Enthusiast 97.

Others were cooler. Neal Martin, in a 2011 note, called it 'another rather vexing performance of the millennial Mouton,' complaining that oak was 'smothering the sense of terroir,' and scored it 90. A Wine Spectator blind retrospective in December 2015 gave it 93, finding it relied 'more on easy opulence than on depth or purity.' James Suckling also gave 93. Jeff Leve of The Wine Cellar Insider scored it 97 in 2011 and 95 in 2023, when he found it more austere and classic than flamboyant.

In a 2018 forum thread titled 'Why is 2000 Mouton the most expensive first growth in 2000?', one collector noted it had among the lowest scores of the First Growths of the vintage yet sold for the most; most replies pointed to the bottle.

How to recognize a 2000 Mouton

There is no paper artist label. The 2000 is the black bottle with the ram raised in gold enamel on the glass, the Mouton name, coat of arms, vintage and the signature of Baroness Philippine de Rothschild printed in gold, and a gold ring around the black capsule. As proof of authenticity, the name Chateau Mouton Rothschild is engraved in the base of every bottle.

The vineyard behind it covers about 83 hectares (205 acres), mostly on a gravel hillock called the Plateau de Mouton, rising to about 27 to 29 meters, with Lafite Rothschild to the north. Today it is planted to 81% Cabernet Sauvignon, 15% Merlot, 3% Cabernet Franc and 1% Petit Verdot at about 10,000 vines per hectare. Sources give the average vine age as about 44 or about 50 years; the oldest vines date from 1890.

The 2000 was also bottled in large formats. A 15-liter Nebuchadnezzar was described at its sale in 2021 as one of only a handful made in this vintage.

The millennium bottle at auction

When the 2000 Bordeaux were first offered as futures, it was the most expensive vintage ever offered that way, with First Growths asking between $2,500 and $3,000 a case, according to one critic. The Mouton has since become, by some collectors' accounts, the priciest First Growth of the vintage.

At Mouton's first auction in Asia, held in Hong Kong on January 30 in a sale commemorating the late Baroness Philippine, a 2000 Nebuchadnezzar sold for close to 1 million Hong Kong dollars, and a millennium lot of six bottles, six magnums, a jeroboam, an imperial and a Nebuchadnezzar brought HK$1.72 million (US$219,900). On September 10, 2021, another 15-liter bottle sold at auction in Hong Kong for HK$1.09 million (about $140,000), reported as a record for a Mouton Nebuchadnezzar.

In 2026 a 12-bottle wooden case sold at an online auction in the United States for $16,280, and a fine-wine trading desk showed a market value of $18,280 for a 12-bottle case.

The numbers

Vineyard

About 83 ha (205 acres)

Plantings today

81% Cabernet Sauvignon, 15% Merlot, 3% Cabernet Franc, 1% Petit Verdot

2000 blend

86% Cabernet Sauvignon, 14% Merlot

Typical production today

About 20,000 cases or less; formerly as much as 25,000 to 30,000

Robert Parker (2010)

96+

Lisa Perrotti-Brown, Wine Advocate (2019)

97

Jeb Dunnuck

98

Wine Spectator

93

James Suckling

93

Neal Martin (2011)

90

Timeline

1. 1853

   Baron Nathaniel de Rothschild buys Brane-Mouton from Isaac Thuret and renames it Mouton Rothschild.

2. 1855

   Mouton is ranked a Second Growth in the Bordeaux classification.

3. 1922

   Baron Philippe de Rothschild, 20, takes over the estate.

4. 1924

   Jean Carlu designs a label, featuring the ram, to mark the first full chateau bottling.

5. 1945

   The 'V for Victory' label begins the annual series of artist labels.

6. 1973

   Mouton is promoted to First Growth, the only change ever made to the 1855 classification.

7. Jan 20, 1988

   Baron Philippe dies; Baroness Philippine takes over.

8. 1999

   Raymond Savignac's label shows the ram, the last artist label before the millennium bottle.

9. Sep 22, 2000

   Harvest of the 2000 begins at Mouton, finishing October 6.

10. Oct 22, 2002

    The Augsburg Ram bottle is unveiled at a wine trade show in New York.

11. Jun 2010

    Robert Parker scores the 2000 96+, calling the bottle perhaps the most beautiful packaging ever on a Bordeaux.

12. 2011

    Neal Martin scores the 2000 90, calling it 'vexing.'

13. Aug 22, 2014

    Baroness Philippine de Rothschild dies at 80; her son Philippe Sereys de Rothschild becomes president in October.

14. Dec 2015

    A Wine Spectator blind retrospective of the 2000 Bordeaux scores the Mouton 93.

15. Feb 2018

    Collectors debate on a wine forum why the 2000 is the most expensive First Growth of its vintage.

16. Oct 31, 2019

    The Wine Advocate's Lisa Perrotti-Brown scores the 2000 97.

17. Sep 10, 2021

    A 15-liter Nebuchadnezzar of the 2000 sells in Hong Kong for HK$1.09 million (about $140,000).

18. Aug 16, 2026

    A 12-bottle wooden case of the 2000 sells at an online auction in the United States for $16,280.

The world in 2000

• Jan 1, 2000

  The year 2000 arrives after months of fear over the Y2K computer bug.

• Mar 10, 2000

  The NASDAQ Composite peaks at 5,048, the top of the dot-com bubble.

• Mar 26, 2000

  Vladimir Putin is elected president of Russia.

• Jun 26, 2000

  A first draft of the human genome is announced at the White House.

• Jul 25, 2000

  An Air France Concorde crashes just after takeoff from Paris, killing 113 people.

• Sep 15, 2000

  The Summer Olympics open in Sydney, Australia.

• Nov 2, 2000

  Expedition 1 begins continuous human presence on the International Space Station.

• Dec 12, 2000

  The U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Bush v. Gore settles the presidential election.

Price record

This is an asking price, not a sale. It is what a seller wanted on the date shown. Asking prices often sit above what buyers pay, but an ask is not a ceiling: a sale can land on either side of it. It is not a value.

By reference price, Chateau Mouton Rothschild 2000 is number 26 of 100 in the wine entries of the FLOAT 100. 12 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (18 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• The glassmaker spent four months inventing a way to enamel gold in relief for the bottle.
• The ram on the bottle copies a drinking vessel made around 1590 by the Augsburg goldsmith Jakob Schenauer.
• Every 2000 bottle has the chateau's name engraved in its base as proof of authenticity.
• Mouton is the only estate ever promoted in the 1855 classification, rising from Second to First Growth in 1973.
• Baron Philippe de Rothschild was the first Bordeaux owner to bottle his entire crop at the chateau, starting in the 1920s.
• Some of Mouton's vines were planted in 1890, among the oldest active vines in Bordeaux.