Le Petit Mouton de Mouton-Rothschild - Pauillac 2020 (750ml)

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Producer	Le Petit Mouton de Mouton-Rothschild
Country	France
Region	Bordeaux
Subregion	Pauillac
Varietal	Bordeaux Blend
Vintage	2020
Sku	06779
Size	750ml

 

Lots of violets, blackberries, bark and iodine. Oyster shell. Full-bodied. Firm and velvety tannins with a long and satisfying finish. Juicy and reserved at the end. Chewy and soft. Needs time to open. First growth. 72% cabernet sauvignon, 24% merlot and 4% cabernet franc. Drink after 2030.

The 2020 Le Petit Mouton has a seductive bouquet with a mixture of red and black fruit, cedar and pencil lead, seeming to gain precision in the glass-very classic in style. The palate is medium-bodied with a sweet core of cassis and blackberry fruit, very composed and very pure. A cashmere-textured finish fans out gloriously. This is a seriously fine Pauillac for long-term cellaring (written before its identity was revealed). Tasted blind at the annual Southwold tasting.

The 2020 Le Petit Mouton De Mouton Rothschild showed beautifully and is certainly up with the top second wines out there. In fact, it’s better than the Grand Vins of many châteaux. Mostly Cabernet Sauvignon with smaller amounts of Merlot and Cabernet Franc, aged 18 months in 50% new French oak, it offers a rich, powerful, concentrated, and medium to full-bodied style as well as ample darker currant and cassis fruits, some tobacco and spicy oak, a great mid-palate, and outstanding length on the finish. It’s approachable today yet will benefit from 3-5 years of bottle age and evolve for at least two decades.

Smells wonderful, perfumed, herbal, milk chocolate, ripe blackberries, cherries and blackcurrants, quite soft and a tad shy but you get a sense of fullness on the nose. Supple, beautifully balanced and textured, round but direct, it’s not overt or too big but just settles in the right places. Really elegant and classy, just so easy to enjoy moving from start to finish with persistence and confidence. It's not trying too hard and nothing feels pushed with an overall gorgeous tetue, weight, balance, and push still with excellent acidity, ripe fruits and an element of minerality that cleans the tongue. Sharp, serious and long. A great wine that's a joy to taste.

This second wine of Mouton Rothschild is dense, the tannins and black fruits giving intensity. It has a softer side, with sweet black fruits that are generous and rounded. Drink this wine from 2026.

The 2020 Le Petit Mouton benefits from the fact that the grand vin this year derives almost exclusively from the estate's core gravel terraces, meaning that many parcels that were included in, for example, the 2018 Mouton ended up in the Petit Mouton in 2020. Offering up aromas of cassis, cigar wrapper and violets, it's medium to full-bodied, fleshy and enveloping, with a broad attack and a layered, concentrated mid-palate.