The famed Château Margaux is a 1er cru classé, first growth property, in Bordeaux. The 2005 vintage was heralded as a 5 star year. Château Margaux upped their Cabernet Sauvignon proportion of the blend in 2005 to 85%. If I have to pick my favourite wine from the wonderful 2005 vintage, this one certainly comes very close. Rich plum purple colours in the glass, just softening around the edges. Attractive just-starting-to-age claret aromas on the nose – liquorice, black truffles and soft black fruits, all carried through on to the palate, has all of the looked-for elements in play. Great plush texture, lovely balance of acidity, tannins and fruit, love the complexity and it really lingers on the palate, impressive persistency. Outstanding for me, great Margaux typicity.
Tasted by Jane Anson
Part of Jane Anson's top 10 fine wines of 2015

The Château Margaux 2005 has a nigh perfect bouquet with brilliant precision and amazing focus: mainly black, mineral-soaked fruit that just gets more and more intense in the glass. That graphite element become more intense with aeration and renders it almost Pauillac in style. The palate is effortless with sumptuous ripe tannin, perfect acidity, layers of sensual ripe red fruit with a precise mineral finish. This is sheer class, a crystalline beauty and the persistence is simply breathtaking.

– eRobertParker.com, Feb 2015

From the moment it is opened, the 2005 Margaux takes things to another level. The bouquet alone is breathtaking in its beauty. Bright, delineated but also explosive, the 2005 takes hold of all the senses and never lets up. The flavors are vibrant and focused, with gorgeous lift and precision. The 2005 is a riveting, aristocratic Margaux that will drink well for several decades. Today the flavors are still remarkably youthful. The wine drinks well because of its magnificent balance, but readers who prefer more aromatic and flavor complexity will want to wait for at least another five years. No matter how you look at it, the 2005 Margaux is pure magic.

Still youthful, the wine is intensely concentrated, full, deep and rich. Aromatically, this is off the hook with its floral nature, you also find spice box, herbs, tobacco leaf and a bushel of red and black fruits. Long, deep and intense, the fruit is sweet, ripe and fresh, finishing with vibrancy, length and purity. But time will make this a better experience, so give it at least 7 more years in the cellar and enjoy it over the next 3-4 decades after that. Tasted April 2022

Quality 988 | Brand 998 | Economics 935 | buzz brand, investment staple
Quality: Predicted life of 25 years, one of the longest drinking windows in its peer group for the 2005 vintage, which averages 11 years Brand: Strong restaurant presence, featuring on 44 of the world's top wine lists, including Lung King Heen Economics: More traded at auction than its peers, its top 5 vintages having seen 4,675 75cl equivalent bottles traded in the past year Production: Higher production than its peer group average of 112,956 bottles

- www.wine-lister.com June 2017

The first-growth 2005 Château Margaux (85% Cabernet Sauvignon, 15% Merlot), a lavish fragrance of blackcurrants, velvety new saddle leather, spring flowers and spice soars from the glass. The wood is already totally concealed beneath the cascade of fruit in this medium to full-bodied, pure and majestic wine. This concentrated, dense, but nevertheless strikingly elegant, multi-layered wine has a finish of 45+ seconds. It builds incrementally to a crescendo and finale. This is a stunner that can be approached already, but promises to be better in another 5-10 years and last at least 25 or more years.

Robert Parker (Wine Advocate #219, Jun 2015)

(bottled late, in November of 2007) Saturated red-ruby. Explosive aromas of plum, raspberry, bitter chocolate, coffee, almond paste and smoke; this smells voluptuous. Then extraordinarily opulent on the palate, with an almost marzipan-like ripeness. Coats every square millimeter of the mouth with a texture of liquid silk. The baby fat here is incredible, but there's a structure of steel and powerful minerality underneath. One of the longest samples I tasted in Bordeaux this spring, and a wine with uncanny finishing sweetness. This fabulous vintage of Margaux should evolve positively in bottle for three or four decades in a cold cellar.

Dark, youthful red; intense, scented, cedary nose, but still clearly backward; concentrated, vital, finely tannic wine; deep and pure in sweetly ripe cassis fruit, subtly mineral, long and graceful, pure and linear in flavor; classic Margaux proportions of elegance and moderation, but no lack of intensity, and with the great, fragrant length so typical of the best of this year. Lovely long term wine, a discreet, scented beauty. Great Margaux. 2025-50+

The nose on this seems more concentrated than the 2000, and the purity of fruit is stunning, with blueberries, raspberries, fresh flowers, and hints of licorice. This is perfect and complete. Full bodied, with notes of forest berries and wild raspberries, this is thick and velvety with perfectly polished tannins. You can really feel the density on this, more than the tannic structure. This is a sleeping beauty that will be utterly captivating when it awakes. Don't touch this until after 2015.