Les Chats
– When Julian invited Richard for lunch to talk about Bunny (Chapter 5), he served four-course meal with a bottle of ”maddeningly delicious“ wine:
"There was roasted lamb, new potatoes, peas with leeks and fennel; a rich and almost maddeningly delicious bottle of Chateau Latour."
At first I thought that Donna Tartt picked Château Latour for this scene to support the leitmotif of chess, since 'la tour' is not only a tower, but also a rook in French but then I saw this logo that said:
"GRAND VIN DE CHATEAU LATOUR
PREMIER GRAND CRU CLASSÉ PAUILLAC", with a tower and a lion on top of it (Picture 1).
– Considering the way this novel is constructed, there can't be any unintentional details, especially like a random lion on top of a tower.
So, plus one big cat to all that feline fuss in the novel, popping-up out of the air like the Cheshire cat. Or like Henry Winter.
Cats in the novel are a symbol of Dionysian madness, lion in particular is one of Dionysus' sacred animals. And a rook represents relatively straightforward Bunny in this game.
SPOILER!
A lion on a rook appears to be an ominous sign of Bunny's progressing madness and future death.
This wine was "maddening", indeed.