Château Cheval Blanc 2005

Critic scores

• Wine Advocate100
• Jeb Dunnuck100

The 2005 vintage in Saint-Émilion

Vintage benchmark: 98/100 (appellation benchmark, not a score for this wine)

Vintage character: A drought that never stalled ripening gave opulent, perfectly structured merlots: a legendary vintage.

Overall reading of the year’s season across Saint-Émilion. An estate can depart from it sharply, in frost or hail years, where two neighbours did not make the same vintage. What this particular wine actually gave is on its technical sheet and in the scores above.

Tasting

Thanks to all these climate factors, 2005 is a great vintage. As the driest year since the existence of weather records, 2005 very much confirms the rule. The cool September also enabled slow ripening and endowed the wine with subtle tannins. The Merlot is a great success, and the vintage also boasts an elegant, complex Cabernet Franc giving it great ageing potential. The colour is a deep, ripe red with purplish tints. The bouquet is complex and rich with ripe black fruit scents. The wine is dense and very rich, with concentrated black fruit flavours. It has lots of volume on the palate and a full finish with the exceptional length that is the signature of the great vintages.

Blend of the 2005 vintage

Winemaking

The winemaking of Château Cheval Blanc is a matter of tradition, in line with a lasting desire to strive towards harmony and balance. During vatting, extraction is gentle in order to preserve quality tannins. Cheval Blanc only uses new oak barrels from 7 different cooperages in order to avoid any type of dominant woody aroma.

Ageing

18 months in 100% new barrels.

Terroir

The mosaic land of Cheval Blanc, built of clay, sand and gravel, is unique. Two good fairies watched over its cradle: Pomerol and Saint-Émilion. Soils and subsoils, configuration, sedimentation, water and mineral deficiency — everything combines here to produce the required concentration and to influence ageing. A very ancient history going back to the Quaternary period and the sediments of the nearby Isle river. At Cheval Blanc, the conjunction of a very high-quality terroir and an original blend of grape varieties gives its production a unique organoleptic personality.