In 1950 Penfolds sent its young chief winemaker Max Schubert to Europe to study sherry and port, because that was what the Australian wine trade lived on at the time. On the way home he stopped in Bordeaux, tasted wines of 40 and 50 years at the merchant Christian Cruse and came back with a different idea: Australia should have a red that lives as long. There was hardly any Cabernet Sauvignon, so he took Shiraz, the grape still called Hermitage in Australia, and aged it in new American oak. The first trial was the 1951 Grange Hermitage, named after the cottage Dr Christopher Rawson Penfold and his wife Mary had built in 1844 at Magill near Adelaide.
The humiliation of 1957
Then came the humiliation. In 1957 the management had the first vintages tasted by experts in Sydney, and the verdict was damning; one critic is said to have remarked that the wine would do at best as an anaesthetic. Schubert was ordered to stop production. He did not obey. With a few trusted colleagues he kept making the 1957, 1958 and 1959 vintages in secret, in hidden barrels and without the budget for new oak. In 1960 the directors re-tasted the early vintages, now mature, realised what they had and officially reinstated the wine. In 1962 the 1955 Grange won its first gold medal at the Sydney show; there would be more than fifty.
To drop at the apéro
In 1957 Penfolds’ management ordered Grange stopped; Max Schubert made the 1957 to 1959 vintages in secret, and in 2001 the wine was officially listed as a heritage icon of South Australia.
Against every European rule
Grange remains a wine against European convention: not a single-vineyard wine but a blend of grapes from several regions of South Australia, above all the Barossa Valley, McLaren Vale and Magill, so that the house style counts for more than the year. Shiraz, in some vintages with a dash of Cabernet Sauvignon, spends about 18 months in new American oak. In 1990 the word “Hermitage” disappeared from the label, because in Europe it is a protected appellation of the Rhône. Peter Gago has been in charge of the wine since 2002.
In 2001 the National Trust of South Australia listed Grange as a heritage icon, the only wine to be so honoured. Since 1991 Penfolds has run “Recorking Clinics”, where collectors have old bottles checked, topped up and re-corked; few houses look after their own wine so carefully.
Shiraz at its most opulent
For the glass: Grange is Shiraz at its most opulent and long-lived, with the sweetness of American oak. If you like the grape cooler, compare it with a Syrah from Valais, where it grows on the terraces above the Rhône, and taste how much the climate matters.