A vine enshrined by the elements – earth, water, sun, night – is, for Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos, ‘the idea of perfection’. It is also the inspiration behind her label for Château Mouton Rothschild 2023 vintage, released today.

Paraíso, commissioned for the Château’s latest vintage label, depicts a series of graphic forms, including blue stars, golden sunrays, pebbled Pauillac soil and a purple grape bunch, drawn in jubilant swirls. There is a grammar and harmony to fine winemaking. Vasconcelos was interested in the ‘coherence between nature and man’ that wine represents, and conveys the idea through a purple triangle to represent the intentions and ‘hands’ involved in crafting wine.

The artist is best-known for large-scale sculpture and immersive works that both decontextualise and celebrate the everyday while honouring decorative and craft-based practices such as Portuguese crochet and embroidery. She is also no stranger to viticultural themes, having created a number of wine-themed sculptures over a 30-year career. In Porto Wine (2015) she treats wine as subject rather than drink, combining sculpture with handmade Viúva Lamego tiles. The monumental Candlesticks series (2006–ongoing) alludes to Duchamp’s first ready-made Porte-Bouteilles (1914) and uses thousands of saké, champagne and wine bottles, internally lit to create glowing totems. The Demijohn series (2010–ongoing) comprises oversized wrought-iron sculptures such as Pavillion de Vin, which is in the shape of a bottle that doubles as a trellis for living vines.

Julien de Beaumarchais de Rothschild, co-owner of Château Mouton Rothschild, and responsible for the estate’s artistic and cultural activity, recalls discovering her work in 2012 at Versailles, where she was both the first female and the youngest artist to show there. He re-encountered her practice more recently at Liria Palace in Madrid, where her playful, humorous works appeared alongside the Old Masters in the Palace’s collection; the connection between the historical and the energy of the contemporary resonated with him. The balance of innovation and tradition is core to Château Mouton Rothschild and the way Vasconcelos ‘grounds Portugal’s craft heritage in modernity’ shares an affinity with winemaking. ‘I really like that link between art and craft because it’s what we have here at Château Mouton Rothschild, the result of high-level craftsmanship and at the same time a work of art, because each vintage is unique, rare and hence precious,’ he says.

Much of Portuguese artistic tradition involves the meeting of beauty and utility in materials and making. Vasconcelos and Paraíso sit within this lineage, and the commission quietly links the patient work of artisans to that of winemakers asking connoisseurs to taste not only terroir but the time, care, skill and intention behind great wine.