Buying bordeaux en primeur may be out of fashion but this was far from the case 20 years ago. The 2005 vintage was keenly awaited, and because the wines were obviously exceptionally high quality, some marked price increases were generally accepted by the wine-buying public as reasonably warranted, unlike with recent primeur offerings. This vintage has only continued to appreciate in value over the years.
Some subsequent vintages may be even better than 2005 (see box below) but at the time there was never any doubt about the quality of the best 2005s. When I wrote about the 2005 en primeur in early summer 2006 after tasting the young 2005s in Bordeaux, I noted: “Most years I find tasting hundreds of young primeur samples of bordeaux each spring intellectually fascinating but physically exhausting. This year, even after tasting over 700 samples of often still-fermenting red and white bordeaux barely six months old, I felt great. Why? Because most years the palate is assaulted by a succession of wines which have an excess of something: alcohol in 2003, tannin in 2004, acidity in 2001. But although the 2005s have a lot of everything (and certainly no shortage of alcohol or tannin), all the elements are in the right proportion.”
Similarly, Christian Moueix, then still managing Petrus, Bordeaux’s most expensive wine, commented that, “It was clear by spring 2005 we were heading for a great vintage.” Jacques Thienpont of Le Pin, the wine that challenged Petrus for the top spot, called it “the deckchair vintage”, a reference to where he spent most of August instead of hovering anxiously over his precious Merlot vines in Pomerol.
Bordeaux vignerons had been scarred by the extremely high temperatures of the 2003 vintage, when nights as well as days reached record temperatures and grapes ripened dangerously fast. Summer 2005 was also hot during the day but nights were cool, so the ripening process was much more gradual, satisfactorily building flavour.
With such quality on offer, the international wine trade was raring to go. As I wrote, “The plane back to London from Bordeaux after the primeurs tasting was 90 per cent wine merchant-loaded, and could have been propelled by sales intent rather than aviation fuel. There will be a very nasty scrap for allocations of the top wines to merchants, and the potentially even nastier business of allocating them to the most faithful, or perhaps most affluent, customers.”
Such was the popularity of the vintage that even Majestic Wine Warehouses, a high-street chain previously unfamiliar with en primeur offers of such classic wines, decided to dip its toe in the water with an offer of 2005s, at prices much lower than the traditional merchants. The managing director at the time, Tim How, reported record demand for them. London merchant Armit even offered four 2005s by the whole barrique.
This was a hugely popular vintage with wine enthusiasts, and I would wager that not a few wine-minded FT readers have some 2005 bordeaux in their collections. But, however well balanced, 2005 had the reputation of being a slow-maturing vintage with a high tannin content that should be kept many a long year before broaching. So a recent tasting of 27 of the top wines will, I hope, be of interest.
London, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Singapore and, soon, Washington DC wine merchants Berry Bros & Rudd must have bought 2005 bordeaux in considerable quantity because they recently launched an offer of wines both by the bottle and by the case at prices that are certainly high but look fair compared to current market rates. And the offer has the advantage that, unusually for the UK, it’s possible to buy mature fine wine by the single bottle (except for three of the 27 wines on offer, which are available only by the case in bond). Including all duties and taxes, prices per bottle of these wines varied from £64 for Ch Batailley, a fifth growth Pauillac from a bottle that I thought was showing well, to £810 for the St-Émilion first growth Ch Cheval Blanc.
To encourage orders, they invited media parasites like me and some of their customers to a tasting, where we had a rare chance to taste all the left bank first growths plus the Cheval Blanc — quite a treat. My favourite wine of the whole tasting was Ch Haut-Brion 2005. As well as obvious ripeness and structure — qualities shared by all these wines — this most famous Pessac-Léognan of all also had freshness, a quality lacking in some of these wines. Some seemed just a bit too stolid and earthbound. Admittedly, Haut-Brion is more approachable than most in youth in virtually all vintages. An optimist might feel that my more “stolid” examples will eventually mature into something even more beguiling, but if an expensive wine still isn’t giving maximum pleasure after one has paid nearly 20 years of storage charges, there’s an argument for not buying it at all.
Of the 27 wines shown, only four were from the right bank. The cheapest of these, Ch Figeac (£202), was the most glorious, a wine with an obvious past, present and future. But the most expensive after Cheval Blanc, Angélus (£454) tastes now a bit too reminiscent of the time when St‑Émilion producers seemed fatally in love with oak and alcohol, not least in contrast to the much subtler Cheval Blanc. With 14.5 per cent on the label, Angélus was the most potent wine in the collection, and the only one to taste actively sweet. In 2005, Angélus was far from the only St-Émilion in this now-passé style.
When tasting wines, I not only write a tasting note and, rather reluctantly, add a score out of 20, I also try to suggest a period during which the wine is likely to show at its best.
With these 2005s tasted recently, using the huge amount of guesswork required for this exercise, most of my suggested drinking windows began around 2017 or 2018. The most backward wine was Ch Léoville Las Cases (£202). As usual Ch Latour (£604) seemed a bit less evolved than most, but not as backward as one might expect of this famously slow developer in a vintage as tannic as 2005. Ch Léoville Barton (£114) is another Cabernet Sauvignon-heavy wine that is famously reserved but the 2005 is well past its austere stage. I suggested 2020 to 2045 as the ideal drinking window for both Léoville Barton and the two of three wines from the Margaux commune, Chx Margaux (£604) and Palmer (£303), both of which were showing extremely well.
Presumably, Berry’s main purpose was to make money, but their subsidiary purpose of reminding us how good fully mature red bordeaux can be was certainly achieved.
Tasting notes, scores and suggested drinking dates on Purple Pages of JancisRobinson.com. International stockists on Wine-searcher.com
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