This is also exceptionally classy and refined with spicy and fresh black and blue berry fruit aromas that complement to perfection the rich powerful and massive flavors that manage to retain a wonderful sense of detail on the almost sternly structured finish yet the sap buffers any austerity. This is a big Musigny but for all the size and weight the balance is impeccable. Potentially the best wine in the range if only barely. Drink: 2020+

The Prieur 2005 Musigny delivers a gorgeous bouquet of diverse sweet flowers cassis laced with lemon zest spices and humus. Sleek polished and silken-textured in the mouth this wine offers superb concentration of super-ripe fruit with marrowy meatiness but with more refinement and youthful class than the Chambertin not to mention a buoyancy and dynamism and a sheer infectious juiciness in its finish loaded with bitter-sweet florals.Nearly all bottlings from this negociant - on an upward path since the influx of Rodet capital in the early '90s - in fact originate in the Domaine Jacques Prieur. Martin Prieur and his team have striven to capture purity of fruit through gentle extraction although for my taste I found some of their 2005s overly confectionary due to the influence of toasty new wood on already very sweetly ripe raw material. After malo - which was generally quite late here this year - the wines were sulfured but not yet racked.