Medium yellow. The nose shows faint bready notes over equally faint pear fruit. Quite full in the mouth, also quite dense. Whilst your mouth slowly waters after you swallow, it still seems to lack a little freshness. A reasonable finish, but just a little too clumsy and heavy…

2002 was fantastic and 2004 was very good, so I bought a six-pack of 2005 blind! The nose is pretty classic for this bottling with faintly oaky, sweet depth, pear fruit and some higher tones – eventually a little minerality too in this vintage. This has a slightly different stance to the plusher 2002, it’s very well balanced but throughout the mid-palate and into the finish it’s rather more mineral with slowly lingering acidity. Less facile than the very user friendly 2002, I think this will also be rather long lived. Excellent