Looking Back To Go Forward: Lafite-Rothschild 1868 – 2015

 BY NEAL MARTIN | JULY 10, 2018

Apocalypse Now inveigles me to watch just another couple more minutes despite a taxi due at dawn. There is a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it scene where amidst the mayhem of artillery fire, troops land on the beach whilst an hirsute filmmaker yells for soldiers to not look at his camera.

I’m watching a film about an invasion being filmed. Clever.

I notice something...isn’t that Francis Ford Coppola himself shouting at Martin Sheen? I could confirm with two clicks of a mouse or I can ask Coppola himself tomorrow night. That’s a strange thought, one I could never envisage. Coppola and yours truly: breathing the same air. I switch off the TV. That’s enough napalm for tonight. I need to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for an imminent dinner that promises to be as epic as the Godfather. Perhaps even Godfather Part II? Preferably, it will not be as traumatic as Apocalypse Now.

This year, the de Rothschild family is hosting three intimate dinners to celebrate 150 years since Baron James de Rothschild’s acquisition of Lafite-Rothschild in 1868. The family is inviting not just a monocépage of crusty old wine writers, but blending artists, actors, chefs and fellow winemakers from Bordeaux and beyond to create a more intriguing blend for each of the evenings. Unofficially it is an opportunity to introduce two faces of the next chapter: Jean-Guillaume Prats who replaces the (shy and) retiring Christophe Salin as CEO and Saskia de Rothschild who steps into the (presumably larger) shoes of her father and chairman, 77-year old Baron Eric de Rothschild, who has run the estate since 1974. It is also a good excuse to mine the estate’s library of older vintages, allowing Jean-Guillaume and Saskia to acquaint themselves with the vinous DNA of Lafite-Rothschild. Each soirée is bejeweled with unique combinations of vintages: young and old, renowned and derided, famous and forgotten. Why vicariously read about great wines when you can taste them? The knowledge gleaned will be priceless going forward.

The notes in this article originate not only from the tasting at the property, but also a dinner in Hong Kong that I attended a few weeks earlier, and several other recent tastings. Together they offer a time-arching overview of the wines, if not quite with the comprehensiveness bestowed to Jean-Guillaume Prats and Saskia de Rothschild, who by all accounts may have experienced all 150 vintages under the de Rothschild’s proprietorship.

Assembling under the wisteria, Saskia de Rothschild gathers the troops.

Saskia de Rothschild’s appointment was a surprise to some, not least because she has two brothers and assorted cousins no doubt gunning for the position to varying degrees of enthusiasm and merit. It sets a precedent or sorts, re-turfs a bit of old Bordeaux. Not only at 31 years is she the youngest proprietor of a First Growth, she is also what is known as a “woman”. Apologies for the glibness, but how many female owners of a Grand Cru Classé can you name apart from Corinne Mentzelopoulos?

“Too few” is the easier answer to pronounce.

I have only met Saskia de Rothschild three or four times, first introduced during en primeur last year, prior to the official announcement. “Well, you’re different,” I thought. Not because “she” is not a “he”. Rather the combination of youth and unorthodox career path that clearly shapes her perspective on life. Most estate managers tend to learn their viticultural chops at the University of Bordeaux or graduate with MBAs from reputed business schools such as INSEEC, ostensibly the incubator for future Bordeaux proprietors and technical directors. Saskia lived in Paris and New York, trained as a journalist and worked for the International New York Times as an investigative correspondent in countries such as Ivory Coast, Afghanistan and Ethiopia. I remember chatting with her about the latter. It was clear that the African countries made a deep impression, and doubtless it will always tug her wanderlust. Such experiences must seem a million miles away from the one she now enters. I wonder how she reconciles opposite ends of this inequality-riven world? 

It is an assiduous appointment: an ideal figurehead and decision-maker that chimes with these times of gender equality, the #MeToo era. Knowing a little about her character already, Saskia de Rothschild will not be a frontispiece behind which another person (a man) will run their estates, even though Jean-Guillaume Prats brings valuable experience and business acumen from his time managing Cos d’Estournel and his subsequent tenure at LVMH. As the first female chairman of Domaines Barons de Rothschild, the umbrella company that includes six estates as well as Lafite-Rothschild, de Rothschild now occupies a position in which she will navigate the future, the lodestar. Some might point towards her inexperience: an internship at L’Evangile and assisting the blending at Lafite-Rothschild when she was younger. However, apart from having already been a co-director for two years alongside her father, those that pursue careers outside wine tend to mature into the most rounded and capable managers. She is wisely investing considerable time on the ground, getting the proverbial dirt under her fingernails, mucking in to learn winemaking by praxis, when she could just swan imperiously about the estate. That is clearly not her style.

Would such an appointment be conceivable even just a decade ago?