2005 Chateau Musar Blanc

Community Tasting Notes (51) Avg Score: 91.7 points

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  6/18/2023 - PSPatrick wrote: 94 Points

  Decanted for two hours in the morning, poured over dinner. Medium amber-golden colour. Dried stone fruit, honey, butter, nuts, beeswax, and marzipan, with high acidity and great persistence. Lightly creamy texture. Pleasantly bitter finish. Great concentration and intensity! The length stands out. Amazing wine! Drink or hold.

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  6/9/2023 - Ernestas Likes this wine: 94 Points

  Lebanese night, Chateau Musar tasting (Vilnius, Lithuania): Chateau Musar tasting, flight 2/4, wine 7/12. Ungrafted 50 to 90 year old vines located at 1300 meters of altitude, made from a blend of 66% Obaideh and 34% Merwah, aged for 9 months in new small FR oak barrels and 6 years in bottle. Intense and rich aroma of spices, honey, butter, dry peaches, beeswax, dried orange, bruised apple, nutty hints. Medium body, creamy and weighty as other vintages, but this has the highest acidity which makes it seamlessly well balanced with dried fruit, buttery and earthy flavours.

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  9/17/2022 - forceberry wrote: 96 Points

  Made from Obaideh (65%) and Merwah (35%) grapes sourced from ungrafted, low-yielding vineyards over 50 years of age, located at the altitude of 1,200 meters (4,000 feet) above sea level. Unlike in most European wine countries, the 2005 was an atypically cool and humid vintage in Lebanon, resulting in harvest delayed more than a week from normal schedule and with wines showing lower than average alcohol and higher acidity. The wine is fermented on indigenous yeasts in a combination of French 225-liter barriques and stainless steel tanks; left to age in oak barrels for at least 9 months before bottling. 12% alcohol. Tasted in a Musar Blanc 2014-1998 vertical.
  
  Medium-deep golden yellow color. Rich, sweet-toned and moderately evolved nose with seductive aromas of honeydew melon, some marzipan, a little bit of ripe apricot, light notes of beeswax, a hint of something vaguely funky, a perfumed touch of orange blossom and dried flowers and a whiff of poached pear. The wine feels like a conundrum on the palate: while it is moderately full-bodied and quite concentrated, it is also very brisk and remarkably light on its feet as well, its racy acidity lending the wine exceptional structure and an almost electric feel to it. There are focused flavors of lemony citrus fruits and crunchy Granny Smith apple, some creamy tones, a little bit of beeswax, light sweeter notes of honeydew melon, a hint of stony minerality and a touch of toasted spices. The overall feel is somewhat evolved, but still very energetic and full of life. The finish is firm, brisk and lengthy with intense and quite complex flavors of lemony citrus fruits and tangy salinity, some crunchy Granny Smith apple tones, a little bit of beeswax, light stony mineral notes, tertiary hints of chopped nuts and creaminess and a touch of savory old wood.
  
  This is consistently one of the greatest Musar whites I've tasted. While I've had Musar whites better than this, there has always been some bottle variation, whereas this wine has never received anything lower than 95 points from me - and this was the 5th time I tasted this wine! Truly an exceptional effort that has been quite a concentrated wine all the way from the beginning, but has only acquired more depth, layers and complexity with age. Although the wine is aging at an almost glacial pace - it has been surprisingly similar for the past seven years I've been following its evolution - I feel there is still quite a bit of room left for further development. A magical wine that can be drunk or kept for years more, so very highly recommended. This has been outrageous value at 30,90€.

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  4/27/2022 - NiklasW Likes this wine: 91 Points

  Popped and poured, it was maybe 10 degrees. The nose is very interesting, with dried apricot and yellow apple. It does feel fresh, no nuttiness or sherry here! The palate is delicious, especially once the wine gets more air, creamy, yellow fruit, bit of smoke and white pepper. A very interesting wine, certainly does not feel like it’s 17 years old!

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  4/11/2021 - Kirk Grant wrote:

  So...I opened a bottle of this in September 2019. There was probably a 4th of the bottle left, I put a glass stopper on the top and then placed the bottle on my kitchen windowsill...where it sat until yesterday. You know what? The wine was still enjoyable. It was nowhere near as good as it was freshly opened, but it was certainly still drinkable or that's what three of us with a combined 50+ years working in the wine industry thought.

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