Find this wine As you may have noted here and in our tasting notes, revisiting the 2005 bordeaux in bottle has done nothing to dim our enthusiasm for them. See also our even more recent tasting notes on a wide range of 2005 St-Emilions which merely confirmed this impression. This is such a consistent vintage with its lovely fully ripe fruit that you can safely choose wines at the bottom of the quality ladder and in most cases find a much better wine than usual for the simple appellation Bordeaux. A real upgrade in viticultural techniques in Bordeaux’s less glamorous areas recently is also a factor here. Ch Pey La Tour Réserve 2005 Bordeaux Supérieur is a particularly well distributed example that goes on special offer tomorrow in the UK when Waitrose reduces the price from £8.99 to £7.69. The Wine Society sell it for £8.95 a bottle and £107 a case. You can find it in Germany for 11.99 euros and in the US for $16.99.
They may well be more interested in another great buy at around this price level that I tasted recently. Lea & Sandeman Bordeaux 2005 (£7.95 a bottle, or £6.95 as part of a dozen) is a very particular wine from a single 4.2 ha/10 acre property very close to Fronsac. This is the first vintage produced there since it was bought by Renaud Lecoq, who used to be with the négociant Jean-Philippe Janoueix. The soils are particularly high in clay and silt, propitious for rich Merlot. The new team are pulling out all the stops and treating these Merlot vines to savage pruning, debudding, deleafing and crop thinning and vinification techniques designed to make a wine chock full of character and fruit that can be drunk within the first three years of its life: five day’s cold maceration before fermentation, regular but short pumping in the first phase of fermentation, 10 days’ post fermentation maceration but no longer than a three-week cuvaison to keep the fruit juicy. Maturation was in 400 litre casks (a third new) so as to minimise the uptake of oak tannins. The result is a lovely plump wine with the earthiness and density of a Fronsac – real personality for the price. All in all, look out for 2005 Bordeaux – not least three of our favourite but relatively obscure 2005 St-Emilions tasted last week, which, since Stephen Browett of Farr Vintners also attended this Decanter magazine tasting, are now stocked by Farr in London.