This image grab taken on Dec 2, 2020 from the official website of Château Mouton Rothschild shows a bottle of Château Mouton Rothschild 2018.

Château Mouton Rothschild, one of the most famous wine producers in the world, has announced that the label of its 2018 vintage will feature an artwork by the Chinese artist Xu Bing. 

Xu, a printmaker and installation artist whose work has shown at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and the British Museum in London, has decorated the label with calligraphy that looks Chinese but actually uses the Latin alphabet to spell the name “Mouton Rothschild.” 

The French château has commissioned a different artist for its label every year since 1945, including Pablo Picasso in 1973

The French château has commissioned a different artist for its label every year since 1945. Pablo Picasso designed the 1973 vintage, four years after Joan Miró did it. Lucian Freud designed the label in 2006; in 2014, it was David Hockney.

“We wanted to have a Chinese artist,” says Julien de Beaumarchais de Rothschild, Mouton Rothschild’s co-owner and the person responsible for Xu’s selection. “It’s a big country, and very important for us,” he continues. “There are a lot of connoisseurs [there] who really know wine.” 

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China’s importance to the wine market was only one factor. Xu had visited Mouton Rothschild in 2013 and developed a relationship with Baroness Philippine de Rothschild, Julien’s late mother, and Xu has been on the family’s shortlist ever since.

“After looking at him thoroughly,” Rothschild says, “he was really my preferred artist.”

This undated photo shows Chinese artist Xu Bing. (JIANG DONG / CHINA DAILY)

Famous like Mouton  

The family’s criteria are straightforward. “The artist has to be famous like Mouton is famous,” Rothschild says. “We don’t make discoveries—we don’t help people discover new artists on our labels.” 

It also helps if the artist likes wine.

“It would be a bit—what can I say—we would be a little bit frustrated if the artist didn’t like wine at all,” Rothschild says. “We love him, but he doesn’t drink a sip of wine? What do we do? That’s a big question, and I’ve never been asked it.”

And, he adds, “I hope never to be.”

This image grab taken on Dec 2, 2020 from the official website of Château Mouton Rothschild shows the label of Château Mouton Rothschild 2018.

Liquid payment

It would be particularly problematic, given the unique nature of Mouton Rothschild’s business arrangement with its artists.

“They get cases of wine” as payment, explains Rothschild. “It’s always been like this. There’s never been a penny, dollar, euro exchanged—of course we pay when they have expenses, but we never pay anything that's linked to their work of art.” 

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Instead, artists get an unspecified number of cases of wine with their design on the label. (Currently, the price of a single bottle of 2018 Mouton Rothschild is listed at US$570.)

Occasionally, Rothschild continues, this is a spectacularly good deal for the artist, especially in banner years such as this one; other times, it’s Mouton that wins out.

“Some years, if you were going to do an evaluation, we have art that is [worth] much more than the wine, and some years the wine is worth more,” he says. “But we’re not in that kind of state of mind.”