Aromas of bright red raspberry and red currant and herbal distillates inform the nose of the Potel 2005 Bonnes Mares. Remarkably smooth and polished on the palate, offering a scintillating display of smoked, peppered meats, tart berries, pungent tobacco and bitter-sweet licorice, this finishes with unusual elegance, refinement and buoyancy for a Bonnes Mares, not to mention for a wine of such sheer intensity. As with so many of the best of Potel’s 2005s, there are certainly ample tannins, but these are exceedingly refined and unobtrusive. I suspect that this is hiding significant incipient complexity and would plan on giving it a decade or more to evolve.

David Schildknecht (Wine Advocate #171, Jun 2007)

A surprisingly high-toned nose that is almost aggressively floral with a cool and reserved character that introduces chewy, focused and linear flavors that are obviously quite firmly structured on the serious, austere and backward finish that is hugely long, indeed it's the longest wine in the entire line-up. That said, it is classic young Bonnes Mares and it will not be a wine given to making friends in its youth.

– Burghound.com. Tasted: Jan 2007

Medium bright red. Aromas of raspberry, mocha, brown spices and underbrush. Dense and rich but not a particularly sweet style. There's wonderfully rich, sexy black raspberry and cassis fruit here but today the texture is a bit muscular, even chunky. This will need time to absorb its new oak. Right now I'm not finding quite the perfumed high tones or finesse of texture this wine showed last year from barrel, but then many 2005s are already beginning to go into a shell.