Penfolds Grange Collectors Event DLynn at Wine Watch

"It wasn't always like this. Before Paris, people didn't drink our wine. I mean, my friends did. But you could hardly consider their palates discerning..."

Bo Barrett - Bottle Shock 

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 go down 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 2011 Grange will be in the fall.

Over the years we have had both John Duvall and Peter Gago, the last two winemakers for Grange along with other Penfolds’ personalities and this year we have the star of the movie “Somm” D Lynn Proctor on hand to tell the story of the iconic Grange.  This year we have decided to add an extra Grange tasting to the calendar and for the first time we will host a Collectors Series event with D Lynn.

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.

 

Penfolds Grange Collectors Cellar Tasting with Special Guest D-Lynn Proctor
Friday, July 1st
7:00

Let me explain further how our “Collectors Series Tasting” works

The evening begins at 7:00pm, we will be tasting through a vertical selection of up to 12 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 would like to attend this event just respond to this email with the vintage of Penfolds Grange that you would like to trade for your seat.  We will be serving several small courses to accompany the tasting wines and once again the only fee for this event is one bottle of Penfolds Grange per person.

**There are only 12 spaces available for this event.

Here are the vintages that we have already:

** 2011 Penfolds Grange South Australia (D Lynn is bringing the new release!)

2010 Penfolds Grange South Australia
Price: $850.00    Sale Price: $675.00

(99 Points)   The 2010 Grange is a 4% Cabernet Sauvignon and 96% Shiraz blend made from Barossa Valley, Clare Valley, Adelaide Hills, McLaren Vale and Magill Estate fruit that was aged 17 months in 100% new American oak hogsheads. Very deep purple-black in color, this is classic Grange - amongst the finest produced - replete with fresh, vibrant and youthful black fruit notes showing some blueberry aromas and accents of camphor, anise and the slightest floral hint plus a whiff of oak in the background to lend a cedar-laced lift to this textbook Shiraz nose. Medium to full-bodied in the mouth, it is very taut and finely constructed showing typically firm, grainy, uniform tannins, great concentration and wonderful persistence on the finish. If I have any very slight complaint of this near perfect wine it is that it seems a little too clinical and appears to speak less of the land and the heart of South Australia and more of the very skilled winemaking than did the Grange from the magical 2008 vintage.   eRobertParker.com #215    Oct 2014

2004 Penfolds Grange South Australia

(99 Points) I'm not sure that ripe, South Australian shiraz gets any better than this - in terms of depth and complexity. It's a credit to Peter Gago and his team. It tastes spectacular. Perfect structure, depth and length. Espresso, crushed ants, blood plums, earth, malt, Asian spice, bay leaf, black tea, pan juices. Tannins cut, crush and mould the wine in the most positive of manners. Massive fragrance. Much like the fabulous 1996 model, though the oak on this one is better integrated than it was with the 1996 as a young wine. Subtle, smoky, barrel ferment characters too. If you are ever going to buy a new-release Grange, this is the one. It's a fifty-year wine. The Wine Front Review Australia

2002 Penfolds Grange South Australia

Price: $498.00    Sale Price: $400.00
 

(98 Points) Last but not least is Australia's most famous wine, the 2002 Shiraz Grange. The 2002 version was sourced from 77.5% Barossa Valley and 22.5% from McLaren Vale. Included in the blend is 1.5% Cabernet Sauvignon. It spent 17 months in 100% new American oak. Opaque purple, it gives off an ethereal bouquet of violets, saddle leather, blueberry, blackberry, pencil lead, and chocolate. This is followed by a full-bodied wine with tremendous concentration, multiple layers of flavor, ripe tannins, and great balance. Thick and rich, with a 60-second finish, it will slowly blossom over the next 15-20 years and provide pleasure through 2050. It is a legend in the making! Penfolds, arguably Australia's most famous winery, continues to perform at a high level under the leadership of Head Winemaker, Peter Gago. Wine Advocate # 173, Oct 2007

1999 Penfolds Grange South Australia
Price: $438.00    Sale Price: $350.00
Quantity in Stock: 39

(94-96 Points) Only the third Grange to be made from 100% Shiraz , the 1999 Grange is superb. The color is inky purple. The wine shows unformed but gorgeously sweet notes of blackberries intermixed with smoke, licorice, and asphalt. This is a wine of great intensity, sweet tannin, voluptuous texture, and a spectacularly long finish. Patience will be required, as it will not be released until May 1, 2004. Anticipated maturity: 2007-2025.  The Wine Advocate

1997 Penfolds Grange

Price: $437.00    Sale Price: $350.00

(94 points)  The 1997 Grange (a blend of 96% Shiraz and 4% Cabernet Sauvignon) looks to be a classic Grange, although slightly softer and more forward than the backward 1996. The saturated purple-colored 1997 offers a gorgeously sweet nose of blackberry liqueur, cherries, camphor, chocolate, plums, and mocha. The wine is opulently-textured, extremely soft, layered, and seductive, with Grange's tell-tale personality well-displayed, but in a seamless, seductive style. This is a superb Grange that can hold its own against the more heralded 1996. Anticipated maturity: 2005-2022.    Wine Advocate #143    Oct 2002

1992 Penfolds Grange

Price: $440.00    Sale Price: $359.00

 

(92 points)  This is a very aromatic Grange that seems to be the product of a vintage where the wines are showing extremely well young. It is dense purple, with a sweet blackberry/cherry nose and some subtle cedar and licorice in the background, unctuously textured, thick, full, without as many nuances of some of the greatest vintages of Grange, but very concentrated and dense. Anticipated maturity: now-2017.  eRobertParker.com Feb 2002

1990 Penfolds Grange South Australia

(94 points) The 1990 performed well in the tasting, but, along with the 1980, was the least impressive of these Granges. The 1990 is loosely knit, seems to border on overripeness with its jammy character, and has a slightly more aggressive style of tannin ... or are the acids more pronounced? It is certainly outstanding, displaying full body along with a classic smoky, blackberry, cassis, pepper, and forest floor-scented bouquet. Of all these wines, it appears to be the most evolved.

Grange, Penfolds' flagship wine, is, by many accounts, the most renowned and world-famous wine produced in Australia, and these six vintages from my cellar all acquitted themselves well. These wines are almost always Shiraz, but many vintages include less than 10% Cabernet Sauvignon, and there are cross-appellations blends from vineyards in the Barossa and McLaren Vale. Wine Advocate # 183 Jun 2009

1985 Penfolds Grange Shiraz South Australia

(90 Points) Considered a more "restrained" Grange, this wine has balance but a somewhat foursquare/monolithic character with dry, astringent tannin in the finish, hence the question mark. The color is still a healthy dense purple, and the wine shows the tell-tale peppery, asphalt, earthy, creme de cassis characteristics, but the tannin seems to be increasingly problematic. As always, it is still a young wine, so the question that begs to be answered with time is, "Is it just unevolved and backward, or is it too tannic?" eRobertParker.com, Feb 2002

1977 Penfolds Grange South Australia

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.