Penfolds Grange Collectors Dinner

"You have only so many bottles in your life, never drink a bad one."



Len Evans

We don’t waste time here at the Wine Watch as every day above ground should be special and celebrated with Great wines.  You never know when your last bottle will be but we are trying to take down as many great wines as we can before our time runs out!

One of the reasons that I get out of bed in the morning is to drink wines like Penfolds Grange. Grange is a symbol of the best that Australia has to offer, the pinnacle of quality and the epitome of what a Shiraz from southeast Australia is and standard bearer should be. That is why we host an annual event to showcase the newest release of this iconic wine.  That is an extra event that we have on the schedule this year as our tasting featuring the new release of the 2016 Grange will be in the summer.

Our "Collector Series" tasting event is where we ask you, our wine drinking people, to come up with some wine from your wine collection to add to the party. If you don’t have any Grange in your cellar don’t worry we have an incredible collection of Grange to choose from and I have included everything that we have in the store from Penfolds on this e-mail offering including all the new releases which will be included in this tasting.

Penfolds Grange Collectors Cellar Tasting with Special Guest John Lowe
Friday, January 31th
7:30pm

Let me explain further- this is a two-part event:

The first part of the evening begins at 7:30pm, this is where we will be tasting through a vertical selection of 10+ vintages of Penfolds Grange. The price of admission is one bottle of Penfolds Grange from your cellar, but here is the catch- we only need 1 bottles of each wine, so the longer you wait to respond the harder it will be to get a seat as you will have to go further back in time because the youngest vintages will be filled up by the first collectors who respond. 

If you do not have a bottle of Grange in the cellar that is a different vintage than those below we may be able to help.  We just happen to have one of the largest collections of Penfolds Grange in Florida so I have included a list of all the Grange that we have in the store at the end of this announcement. 

If you would like to attend the vertical tasting just respond to this email with the vintage of Penfolds Grange that you would like to trade for your seat.

**There are only 16 spaces available for this event.

Here are the vintages that we have already:

Penfold’s Grange Shiraz 2015
Price: $802.50 Sale $ 706.20

Penfold’s Grange Shiraz 2003

Penfold’s Grange Shiraz 2001

Penfold’s Grange Shiraz 1999

We will continue to add on to this list as the reservations come in for the event.

Part 2 is dinner:

This is where we taste the additional wines which are new releases from Penfolds below the menu and you get to finish your bottle of Grange.  You must be a part of the collectors tasting or Part 1 of the event to qualify for the dinner. 

Dinner Menu

Cheese and Charcuterie Selections
Grilled Octopus with kalamata olives aioli and Basil red onion relish
Kurabuta Pork Short Ribs with Creamy Grits, and Shiraz Reduction
Australian Lamb Chops with Jalapeno Mint Jam and Blistered baby fingerling Potato
Dark Chocolate Creme Brulee

The dinner is $95 + tax and you can drink the rest of your bottle of Grange and these wines below with dinner!

Wines that will be served at the tasting in addition to the vertical of Penfolds Grange:

Penfold’s Bin 28 Shiraz 2017
Price: $30.00 Sale $26.40

Bin 28 offers a showcase of warm-climate Australian Shiraz – ripe, robust and generously flavoured. First made in 1959, Bin 28 is named after the famous Barossa Valley Kalimna Vineyard purchased by Penfolds in 1945 and from which the wine was originally sourced. Today, Bin 28 is a multi-region, multi-vineyard blend, with the Barossa Valley always well represented.

Penfold’s Bin 407 Cabernet Sauvignon 2017
Price: $75.00 Sale $66.00

Inspired by Bin 707, Bin 407 offers varietal definition and approachability, yet still with structure and depth of flavour. Textbook Cabernet Sauvignon, the varietally expressive Bin 407 highlights the rewards of Penfolds multi-region, multi-vineyard blending, with a core of ripe fruit supported by sensitive use of French and American oak.

Penfold’s Bin 389 Cabernet/ Shiraz 2017
Price: $75.00 Sale $66.00

Bin 389 was often referred to as ‘Baby Grange’, in part because components of the wine are matured in the same barrels that held the previous vintage of Grange. First made in 1960 by the legendary Max Schubert, this was the wine that helped forge Penfolds reputation with red wine drinkers by combining the structure of cabernet sauvignon with the richness of shiraz.
Exemplifying the judicious balance of fruit and oak, Bin 389 highlights the generous mid-palate Penfolds in known for.

Penfold’s St Henri Shiraz 2016
Price: $97.50 Sale $85.80

St Henri is a time-honoured and alternative expression of Shiraz, and an intriguing counterpoint to Grange. It is unusual among high quality Australian red wines as it does not rely on any new oak.
Proudly, a wine style that hasn’t succumbed to the dictates of fashion or commerce. St Henri is rich and plush when young, gaining soft, earthy, mocha-like characters as it ages. It is matured in old, 1,460 litre vats that allow the wine to develop, imparting minimal, if any oak character.

Penfold’s RWT Shiraz 2016
Price: $148.50 Sale $130.68

Penfolds RWT Shiraz presents an admirable alternative to the multi-regional sourcing and American oak maturation that are hallmarks of Grange, expressing instead, single-region Barossa Valley Shiraz matured only in French oak. The initials RWT stand for ‘Red Winemaking Trial’, the name given to the project internally when developmental work began in 1995. Naturally, now no longer a ‘Trial’! RWT Shiraz was launched in May 2000 with the 1997 vintage. Its style is opulent and fleshy, contrasting with Grange, which is more muscular and assertive. RWT is made from fruit primarily selected for its aromatic qualities and fine texture rather than sheer intensity or power of flavour. The result is a wine that helps to redefine Barossa Shiraz at the highest quality level.

Penfold’s Grandfather Port NV
Price: $72.00 Sale $63.36

With each vintage, varietal batches are selected for Grandfather. These batches are individually aged in seasoned old oak casks before being blended together at 14 years of age. This blend is then introduced into the ‘Grandfather Solera’. This Solera consists of six stages that are designed to fully integrate all components offering consistency and freshness with a final minimum average blended age of 20 years.

Beautifully presented in an exquisite gift box featuring a Penfolds stopper and certificate of authenticity, Grandfather Rare Tawny is a highly coveted gift for life’s special milestones.

A bit of history about Penfolds:

Penfolds, a household word in Australia and one of the world's largest wine companies, traces its origins back to Magill on the outskirts of Adelaide at the foot of the Mount Lofty Ranges.   It was at Magill that Dr. Christopher Rawson Penfold, the founder of this great firm, first planted his vineyard.  Dr. Penfold, the son of a Sussex vicar, the Reverend John Penfold, was schooled in England, and married his wife there in 1835.  However, within a few short years, he decided to try his hand at life in the colonies and purchased a grant of land at Magill in South Australia for what was considered a large sum of money.  With his wife and baby daughter, Georgina, he made the hazardous voyage towards the end of 1844.  The family settled on their land at Magill and built a white-washed stone cottage which they named "The Grange".  As well as practicing medicine and looking after his farm, Dr. Penfold planted vine cuttings which he had brought out with their ends dipped in sealing wax to keep the sap in the vines until they were planted.  He did not approve of the quality of imported wine of the time so he made his own for use of his patients with anemia.  Whether the wine was in fact any help to anemia is debatable, but this now discredited cure was the beginning of a huge enterprise.  By the time of his death in 1870, Dr. Penfold had expanded his viticultural holdings and devoted more and more time to winemaking.  In his twenty-six years in the young colony, Dr. Penfold had laid the basis of a veritable viticultural dynasty.

Although the wine business at Magill seemed to falter slightly after Dr. Penfold's death, by 1881 it was again flourishing; and Penfolds was becoming the most important wine producer in South Australia.  Historical records reveal that the stock of wine at the Magill winery in 1881 was about 485,000 liters.  At that time the total quantity in South Australian was about 1.4 million liters.  Wine production continued to increase, and by 1885 trade was flourishing between Magill and all the states as well as New Zealand.  One of Dr. Penfold's four grandchildren, Frank Penfold Hyland (born 1873), was responsible for guiding the company through almost fifty years of successful expansion.  Frank entered the business in 1892 and spent three years in Europe studying winemaking.  After Frank's death in 1948, at the age of 74, the company was administered by a Board of Directors for some fourteen years before it became a public company in 1962.  Expansion continued throughout the sixties and seventies with the most significant expansion occurring in 1982 when Penfolds acquired the Kaiser Stuhl winery.  Throughout the eighties Penfolds continued its aggressive expansion, swallowed up the huge Seppelt winery, and was said to control nearly 40% of all Australian wine production.  Also in 1988, Penfold's flung its far-reaching tentacles abroad and purchased half of Sonoma County's Geyser Peak winery.  Magill is still the headquarters of the Penfolds organization, but their winery at Nuriootpa is the major production facility.  The "Grange", the family's small old white-washed stone cottage, is still maintained at Magill in its original condition and is used as a museum.  Today Penfold's is a huge and successful enterprise.  Indeed, a great deal of wine has flowed since Dr. Christopher Rawson Penfold began to cure his anemic patients at Magill.

All the Penfolds wines in stock at Wine Watch

2017 Penfolds Chardonnay Bin 311 Adelaide Hills Tasmania Tumbarumba
Price: $30.00       Your Price: $26.40            Quantity in Stock: 6

2015 Penfolds Shiraz Max's South Australia
Price: $19.50       Your Price: $17.16            Quantity in Stock: 21

2016 Penfolds Bin 389 Shiraz Cabernet Southeast Australia
Price: $75.00       Your Price: $66.00            Quantity in Stock: 1

2004 Penfolds Cabernet Sauvignon Bin 707 South Australia
Price: $355.00    Your Price: $312.40          Quantity in Stock: 6

Grange – The Holy Grail of Aussie Shiraz

1995 Penfolds Grange Shiraz South Australia
Price: $595.00    Sale Price: $495.00           Quantity in Stock: 4

1996 Penfolds Grange Shiraz South Australia
Price: $575.00    Sale Price: $475.00           Quantity in Stock: 2

1998 Penfolds Grange Shiraz South Australia
Price: $650.00    Sale Price: $525.00           Quantity in Stock: 1

1999 Penfolds Grange Shiraz South Australia
Price: $450.00    Your Price: $396.00          Quantity in Stock: 7

2000 Penfolds Grange Shiraz South Australia
Price: $450.00    Sale Price: $359.00           Quantity in Stock: 1

2002 Penfolds Grange Shiraz South Australia
Price: $550.00    Sale Price: $450.00           Quantity in Stock: 4

2003 Penfolds Grange Shiraz South Australia
Price: $495.00    Sale Price: $399.00           Quantity in Stock: 3

2012 Penfolds Grange Shiraz South Australia
Price: $850.50    Sale Price: $748.44           Quantity in Stock: 1

Ultra Rare BIN Wine

2004 Penfolds Cabernet Shiraz Bin 60A
Price: $1000.00  Sale Price: $750.00           Quantity in Stock: 3

2004 Penfolds Cabernet Sauvignon Bin Block 42 South Australia
Price: $850.00    Sale Price: $700.00           Quantity in Stock: 11

1996 Penfolds Cabernet Sauvignon Block 42 Kalimna Southeast Australia
Price: $499.00    Your Price: $439.12          Quantity in Stock: 8

The Best Value in the fortified wine department

NV Penfolds Club Tawny
Price: $17.00       Your Price: $14.96            Quantity in Stock: 16