The French artist Raymond Savignac was commissioned to do the Mouton Rothschild label for 1999. With a wink and a kick of his heels, the ram (the Mouton totem) invites us to the pleasure of wine-drinking and briskly dismisses the closing millennium.

The most recent note that we have for this wine comes from my fellow Warwick University graduate Neal Martin, dated December 2016: Tasted blind as a vintage comparison at the Valandraud vertical, the 1999 Mouton-Rothschild is a useful, perhaps overlooked vintage from the First Growth estate. It has a clean and precise bouquet you could almost describe this as dainty, which I mean in a positive sense. The fruit is beautifully delineated, almost pastille-like with subtle floral scents emerging with time. The palate is fresh on the entry with supple red berries pierced by a fine line of acidity. No, it is not complex and it has lost a little substance in recent years, yet it is well-balanced with sufficient depth and body on the tobacco and cedar-tinged finish a well-made, easy-going and refined Pauillac to drink now and over the next decade.