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.

An another level, the 2005 Château Margaux is as good as it gets, offering an incredible, full-bodied, layered style as well as the classic nuance, complexity, and elegance this Château is known for. Based on 85% Cabernet Sauvignon and 15% Merlot raised in new barrels, its still youthful ruby/purple hue is followed by a kaleidoscope-like array of cassis, smoked currants, cedar pencil, spring flowers, and graphite. With incredible concentration, a multi-dimensional, layered mouthfeel, loads of ripe yet perfectly integrated tannins, and a finish that makes you salivate, this insanely good Margaux is just now at the early stages of its prime drinking window and has another 30 years of prime drinking ahead of it. Legendry juice.

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. Read more at:https://www.thewinecellarinsider.com/search-wine-tasting-notes/?szSearch=2005%20Chateau%20Margaux

85% Cabernet Sauvignon 8% Merlot 6% Petit Verdot and 1% Cabernet Franc. Extremely dark purple. Thick and opulent. Deepest color they've ever had. Rich ripe and full aromas of rasberry cinamon clove and cucumber with hints of green plumb. Instant chocolate covered cherries on the palate. Very full in the mouth yet soft and sweet enough tannins to be aproachable. Fresh rasberry and blackberry with enough structure to age beautifully but I could almost drink it now due to it's incredible balance. Round well integrated tannins. Possibly the Best Wine of 2005.

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.

This extraordinary wine announces its brilliance at first glance, with a bright curranty fruit aromas that expand quietly at first until one realizes the depth of concentration and flavour it possesses, with exotic spices, smoke, leather, and earth. The blend of 85% Cabernet Sauvignon and 15% Merlot, aged in new casks, produces a silky texture, perfect balance, and enough substance to give fantastic length without any heaviness. This wine was a unanimous favourite in the flight.

98+ 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 M. Parker, Jr.

The 2005 Chateau Margaux is a blend of 85% Cabernet Sauvignon and 15% Merlot. Deep garnet-brick in color, it reveals an earthy nose redolent of crushed rocks, tilled soil, and truffles over a kirsch and creme de cassis core with floral notes coming through. The medium to full-bodied palate is elegant and perfumed, with soft, velvety tannins, finishing long and layered. Perfumed, layered, and approachable now, it is within its ideal drinking window, and will continue to drink well through 2047. In 2003, Corinne Mentzelopoulos bought back the majority stake and became the controlling shareholder of Chateau Margaux. This 2005 was made by Paul Pontallier.

For a Château Margaux, this is an especially rich wine. The dense fruit, superripe but not overpowering, and the blackberry jam flavors show the richness of the year. There is wood alongside the juiciness and sweet tannins. Of course, it will age, but it's so delicious to drink now.

The 2005 Château Margaux is a First Growth that I had not tasted for several years. According to the estate, it finally began to open during the pandemic. I remember this was stellar in its flush of youth, and earned a three-figure score from the Southwold blind tasting way back in 2009. Now at two decades in age, it has a supremely well-defined bouquet with dense blackberry, mulberry, iron filing and dried blood. The palate is still very youthful—as usual, the 2005 is an amazingly backward Margaux. Very well balanced, this has retained that arching structure uncommon in this First Growth vis-à-vis Latour or Mouton Rothschild. The ferrous finish has a very slight medicinal quality, though it is not as mentholé as the Pavillon Rouge. You can see this still has some way to go, but it is finally beginning to reveal what it can do. Tasted at the château. -- Neal Martin

Still very tight, but there are whispers of alder, bay leaf, tobacco and singed sandalwood aromas here. They give way to a beautifully silky and refined, but extremely concentrated, core of cassis and blackberry fruit that has gained a lightly mulled hint. The long finish shows echoes of dark earth and iron that bring you back for more. A beauty, with a long way to go.—Blind '01/'03/'05 Bordeaux retrospective (December 2017). Best from 2025 through 2045. –JM

An extravagantly ripe vintage of Margaux, this has the first-growth scent of a wine at home in its new oak. The texture is succulent and generous, the aromas bright with floral tones and sweet fruit, a taste of fresh strawberries and blackberries macerated in liqueur. This is a beautiful wine, and it may reveal more of its structural power with time.