Don't miss! Outstanding.
A raspberry liqueur nose with hints of spice and underbrush merges into fresh, ripe, round and sweet flavors of surpassing intensity and purity that tighten up in a flash to become tight and linear on the precise, even laser-like finish. There is a beautiful tension to this wine and while there is a serious tannic backbone, this seems supple on the mid-palate because the structure is so well buffered. This too will see its 25th birthday (and many more) in superb condition. Drink: 2017+
-Allen Meadows, Burghound.com, Issue 26. Tasted: Apr 01, 2007

Robert Parker's Wine Advocate 29/06/2007 One of the three batches that will be blended to make up d ‘Angerville’s 2005 Volnay Champans was still in malo, so I base my assessment on the other two. Scented with cherry and cassis, flowers and fungus, smoke and chalk dust, this displays richness and depth, fine tannins and emerging silkiness, and a youthfully firm but long finish loaded with savory subtleties. Just give it 6-8 years before revisiting. (The outstanding d’Angerville 2004s were also very late to finish malo, and the Champans is especially memorable for its vivid sauteed champignons, alluring ginger spice, marrowy richness, and flattering mouth feel, indeed comparable in quality though lacking the developmental potential of this 2005. As a striking example of mercantile bipolar disorder, I purchased this outstanding 2004 for $49.99 from a merchant whose price on the 2005 thus represented a 350% premium!) The late Jacques d’Angerville’s son Guillaume and long-time wine making collaborator and brother-in-law Renaud de Villette can boast a superb collection of 2005s, but an equally apt tribute to the legacy of the late Marquis are the odds-beating results they bottled from 2004, when to the universal difficulties of that vintage were added the ravages of hail it visited on Volnay. The 2005s fermented with pump-overs but no punch-downs and exhibit formidable underlying structure yet pure fruit and early, flattering textural development. ()