Mouton Cadet - The Mars Bar of Bordeaux!

Mouton Cadet is a wine that has, at best, a questionable reputation in the UK.  What was initially a wine to offer cheaper alternatives to Baron Philippe de Rothschild’s more prestigious wines, became a wine that was seen in every supermarket in the UK, discounted to a price that barely covered it’s production costs.  But in 2004, there was a effort made to remove the wine from supermarkets and get it into restaurants  and specialist wine merchants, and to establish this brand as an entry level Bordeaux in more discerning outlets.

Thinking about it, this sort of business plan, a ‘my first Claret’ brand if you will, is pretty sound.  If you are new to wine, have never tried a wine from Bordeaux before and are looking blindly at shelves in a shop, you are more than likely to have heard of ‘Mouton Rothschild’ as a great wine, so you assume that Mouton Cadet will be decent.  You’ll buy the wine, try it and if you like it you’ll buy more as it is a nice, simple way of discovering a new region.  It is like a Mars Bar, it might not be the most exciting chocolate in the world, but it does the job adequately. 

The voices against Mouton Cadet appear to be coming from within the wine trade.  Sure, I have tried loads of decent Bordeaux at ten pounds or under, and as Mouton Cadet is the Mars Bar of Bordeaux, as a specialist retailer I look at it and think “there is no way I’m going to stock that”.  But this is purely brand prejudice and I suspect that similar views from most wine merchants is because of the brand, rather than the product.  I also suspect that, like me, that none of them have tried it recently.

So today I did try it.  The 2007 (a bad vintage for Bordeaux, so no help there for this wine!) Mouton Cadet did everything it should.  Very obviously Merlot dominant, with some slightly confected cherry and a little vanilla coming off the nose with just a touch of green veggies, followed on by a crisper, clean palate.  No oak – which I think it needs a little of – that meant very forward, but a touch hallow, berry fruit, a lot of dark elements which were nice, liquorice and chocolate with more vegetal elements on the finish.  I scored it 7/10, not because it is a brilliant wine, but because for between eight and nine pounds it does what it is supposed to do.  It shows the taste of Bordeaux wine, allows a novice to recognise a brand that they will have heard of (even if only through Mouton Rothschild) and pick a pleasant wine without any assistance whatsoever.

And this is this reason Mouton Cadet belongs in supermarkets and not in restaurants and specialist merchants, despite these latter places being exactly where the company want their product to be found.  Mouton Cadet is a wine that sells itself, and in a restaurant or specialist shop there are trained staff that actively sell wines.  This is the exact opposite of supermarkets that plonk wines on the shelves and let the label do the selling.  If a customer wants to try Bordeaux, and they are in a wine shop, they will ask the person behind the till for advice, pretty confident in the knowledge that they are likely to get, and will be given a good recommendation.  Conversely, these same people wouldn’t dream of asking the spotty teenager that is filling up the shelves in the supermarket and the customer will just make their choice on the label or the brand name, and a strong brand like Mouton Cadet will sell.

I know that these wines deserve a better reputation than they have, but the reason for having a ‘brand’ like Mouton Cadet is so that people can buy a product, blindly, but with confidence, and the volume produced means that they can buy it anywhere.  This is why Mars Bars sell so well, but you wouldn’t sell one in Debauve et Gallais, so you shouldn’t sell Mouton Cadet anywhere other than large chains.

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