Robert Parker’s much anticipated retrospective review of the Bordeaux 2005 vintage has now been published. Last week, Liv-ex observed that a number of wines had been climbing in price since December 2014 following some early upgrades which indicated that the vintage had been underrated when his original in-bottle scores were released in 2008.
For several wines, upgrades have now materialised. Originally, only two Bordeaux 2005s were awarded 100 points in bottle – a surprise to many. Now, 12 wines (below) have received a perfect three-digit score, making 2005 the vintage with the second highest number of 100 point wines (there were 19 for the 2009). Notably, none of these perfect 2005s are from the Medoc: all are Right Bank wines, with the exception of Haut Brion and Mission Haut Brion (Pessac-Leognan).
Parker himself comments in the report that he originally considered the 2005 "a vintage surrounded by excessive and unprecedented hype." He goes on to note that "At the same time, I considered it a vintage that would require considerable patience for the wines to evolve." While more wines score 100-points than in the 2010 vintage, Parker states that overall 2005 is "eclipsed in quality and consistency by both the 2009s and 2010s, but only by a relatively minor margin."
The 12 100 point wines from the Bordeaux 2005 vintage are as follows:
Price increases for a number of the wines above were observed on the Exchange earlier today. These included Mission Haut Brion 2005, which traded for £3,700 last week and £4,490 today, and Cheval Blanc 2005, which traded for £4,100 last week and £4,950 today. Lisa Perrotti-Brown confirmed that some international subscribers of The Wine Advocate had mistakenly received the report a day early on the erobertparker.com bulletin board:
“We've just traced the cause of this situation to our International Mailing House – they mailed early in spite of our specific request to mail today. Therefore it is now clear that some overseas subscribers to the Print Edition have already received their copies.”
Robert Parker’s full report on the Bordeaux 2005s can be accessed at www.erobertparker.com.
