2005 Bordeaux: Here and Now 

BY ANTONIO GALLONI | APRIL 15, 2021

It all started innocently enough with a few bottles of 2005 Bordeaux during lockdown. Then a few more, and then some more after that. Before I knew it I had tasted through a good number of the reference points. The wines were absolutely thrilling, just as I remembered from my last large tasting of the 2005s, about five years ago. One of my close friends suggested a comprehensive look back at the vintage, so here it is.

I was energized by the thought of a full immersion into the 2005s. Those first bottles were so magnificent. Could it be that the wines had finally started to shed some of the youthful tannin that was so prominent years ago? Then I looked at the market and realized that prices for many of these wines have been stable for a number of years, something that is all the more remarkable given what has happened with other collectible wines that have exploded in the last 5-10 years. Of course, the 2005s were priced high on release. I will get to that in a second.

One of the comments I hear often from readers is the challenge of buying fine, ageworthy, fairly priced wines in sufficient volume to adequately stock a cellar. That is very hard to do in some regions. Burgundy and Piedmont come to mind. Naturally, fine wines are not equal substitutes, but 2005 Bordeaux is a treasure trove for the consumer looking to build a cellar filled with superb wines that can be easily bought and enjoyed now, and that also offer terrific value in today’s world. Yes, some of the wines in this article are very expensive by any measure, but as so often is the case in Bordeaux, that really comes down to a pretty small subset of the whole. Personally, the older I get the more pleasure I find in humbler wines that overachieve, and there are plenty of those in this report too. Readers who own the 2005s should be absolutely delighted, as so many of them are fabulous now.

This chart looks at market prices for six of the top wines in this article over the last five years and compares them to three Liv-ex broad market indices.

Looking Back at 2005…

The release of the 2005s coincided with a pretty special time in my life. My parents sold Bordeaux futures when I was in high school and college. That was my first introduction to the wines. In 2005 Robert Parker offered me a job at The Wine Advocate. I started to follow Bordeaux more closely and to taste far more widely just as the 2005s were being released.

Something else happened that was transformational for the wine industry. And that is the emergence of Burgundy as a region for super high-quality, collectible wines. Prices started to escalate rapidly and growers became cult-like figures. Driven by a combination of quality, scarcity and an artisan connection to the land, top Burgundies began to displace Bordeaux in the minds of many top collectors as the most elite, coveted wines in the world. The Bordelais did not exactly help themselves during this period, but that is a subject for a separate article.