Penfolds Grange is an Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

n wine

Wine

Wine is an alcoholic beverage, made of fermented fruit juice, usually from grapes. The natural chemical balance of grapes lets them ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes, or other nutrients. Grape wine is produced by fermenting crushed grapes using various types of yeast. Yeast...

, made predominantly from the Shiraz (Syrah) grape

Grape

A grape is a non-climacteric fruit, specifically a berry, that grows on the perennial and deciduous woody vines of the genus Vitis. Grapes can be eaten raw or they can be used for making jam, juice, jelly, vinegar, wine, grape seed extracts, raisins, molasses and grape seed oil. Grapes are also...

 and usually a small percentage of Cabernet Sauvignon

Cabernet Sauvignon

Cabernet Sauvignon is one of the world's most widely recognized red wine grape varieties. It is grown in nearly every major wine producing country among a diverse spectrum of climates from Canada's Okanagan Valley to Lebanon's Beqaa Valley...

. It is widely considered Australia's "first growth

First Growth

First Growth status refers to a classification of wines primarily from the Bordeaux region of France.-Bordeaux reds:The need for a classification of the best Bordeaux wines arose for the 1855 Exposition Universelle de Paris. The result was the Bordeaux Wine Official Classification of 1855, a list...

" and its most collectable wine. The term "Hermitage

Hermitage AOC

Hermitage is a French wine Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée in the northern Rhône wine region of France south of Lyon. It produces mostly red wine from the Syrah grape; however, small quantities of white wine are also produced from Roussane and Marsanne grapes...

", the name of a French wine appellation, was commonly used in Australia as another synonym for Shiraz or Syrah. It is made by Treasury Wine Estates

Treasury Wine Estates

Treasury Wine Estates is an Australian-based global winemaking and distribution business. Headquartered in Southbank, Melbourne, Victoria, and until a demerger in May 2011 was the wine division of international brewing company Foster's Group.-History:...

.

History

The first vintage of Penfolds Grange was made on an experimental basis in 1951 by winemaker

Winemaker

A winemaker or vintner is a person engaged in winemaking. They are generally employed by wineries or wine companies, where their work includes:*Cooperating with viticulturists...

 Max Schubert

Max Schubert

Max Schubert AM was a pioneering Australian winemaker who is best known as the creator of Grange Hermitage.-Career:He joined Penfolds in the early 1930s as a messenger boy and became chief winemaker in 1948 through 1975...

, while he was employed by Penfolds Wines

Penfolds

Penfolds is an Australian wine producer, founded in 1844 by Christopher Rawson Penfold, an English physician who emigrated to Australia, and his wife, Mary Penfold...

. Having toured Europe in 1950, Schubert implemented wine-making techniques observed in Bordeaux

Bordeaux wine

A Bordeaux wine is any wine produced in the Bordeaux region of France. Average vintages produce over 700 million bottles of Bordeaux wine, ranging from large quantities of everyday table wine, to some of the most expensive and prestigious wines in the world...

 upon his return, aiming to create a red wine able to rival the finest Bordeaux wines both in terms of quality and ageing potential.

Individual bottles of the 1951 vintage are still held by collectors; one sold at auction in 2004 for just over A$

Australian dollar

The Australian dollar is the currency of the Commonwealth of Australia, including Christmas Island, Cocos Islands, and Norfolk Island, as well as the independent Pacific Island states of Kiribati, Nauru and Tuvalu...

50,000. The first vintage to be commercially released was the 1952. Penfolds Grange was styled as a powerful still wine in an age when fortified wines were in fashion. Negative reviews by wine critics and poor commercial prospects for the wine led Penfolds management in 1957 to forbid Schubert from producing Penfolds Grange, but Schubert persisted in secret through 1959. As the initial vintages aged, however, their true value came to be appreciated, and in 1960 the management instructed Schubert to re-start production, oblivious to the fact that Schubert had not missed a vintage.

The great 1955 vintage was submitted to competitions beginning in 1962 and over the years has won more than 50 gold medals. The vintage of 1971 won first prize in Shiraz at the Wine Olympics

Wine Olympics

A Wine Olympics was organized by the French food and wine magazine GaultMillau in 1979; a total of 330 wines from 33 countries were evaluated by 62 experts from ten nationalities. The 1976 Trefethen Vineyards Chardonnay from the Napa Valley won the Chardonnay tasting and was judged best in the...

 in Paris. The 1990 vintage was named 'Red Wine of the Year' by the Wine Spectator

Wine Spectator

Wine Spectator is a lifestyle magazine that focuses on wine and wine culture. It publishes 15 issues per year with content that includes news, articles, profiles, and general entertainment pieces...

magazine in 1995, which later rated the 1998 vintage 99 points out of a possible 100.

Penfolds Grange also carries a "Bin" designation, referring to its storage location in Penfolds cellars while aging. 1951 was Bin 1, 1952 was Bin 4, and later vintages carried various designations. By 1964 the designation was standardised as "Bin 95."

By the end of the 1980s the wine came to be regarded as a collector's item. The name "Hermitage" was dropped from the label with the 1990 vintage, following objections by the European Union

European Union

The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...

 authorities to the use of a French place-name, as no third-country wine entering EU may carry a geographical name recognized by European wine officials.

Listed in the 4th edition of Langton’s Classification of Australian Wine

Langton’s Classification of Australian Wine

Langton's Classification of Australian Wine is a grouping of high-end Australian wines compiled by the Melbourne- and Sydney-based auction house Langton's, first released in 1991. The Classification is a ranking of the best performing wines based on market demand and vintages made...

 at the "Exceptional" level, and have been at the top of the Langton classification since the first release 1991.

Production style

Unlike most expensive cult wines from the Old World

Old World

The Old World consists of those parts of the world known to classical antiquity and the European Middle Ages. It is used in the context of, and contrast with, the "New World" ....

, which are from single vineyard

Vineyard

A vineyard is a plantation of grape-bearing vines, grown mainly for winemaking, but also raisins, table grapes and non-alcoholic grape juice...

s or even small plots (called blocks) within vineyards, Grange is made from grape

Grape

A grape is a non-climacteric fruit, specifically a berry, that grows on the perennial and deciduous woody vines of the genus Vitis. Grapes can be eaten raw or they can be used for making jam, juice, jelly, vinegar, wine, grape seed extracts, raisins, molasses and grape seed oil. Grapes are also...

s harvested over a wide area. This means that the precise composition of the wine will change from year to year and it is the brand

Brand

The American Marketing Association defines a brand as a "Name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller's good or service as distinct from those of other sellers."...

ing and expertise of the winemaking which purchasers value, rather than the qualities of the specific places where the grapes are grown or the particular vines. The quantity of Penfolds Grange produced varies considerably from year to year and is a carefully guarded secret (although Penfolds have disclosed that 1,800 bottles of the original 1951 vintage were produced). Despite the vagaries of grape sourcing and vintage variation due to growing conditions, some believe that there is a consistent and recognisable "Penfolds Grange" style.

Ownership

In the 1980s, Tooth & Co., part of the Adelaide Steamship Group, purchased a number of wineries, including Penfolds. AdSteam sold its wineries to SA Brewing Holdings in 1990, who then amalgamated all of its wine holdings into "The Penfolds Wines Group". In 1994 SA Brewing Holdings split into three companies: brewing into SA Brewing Company, wine in Southcorp Wines, and other activities into Southcorp. In May 2005, ownership of the Penfolds brand, along with its museum collection of Penfolds Grange, passed to the Foster's Group

Foster's Group

Foster's Group is a beer group with interests in brewing and soft drinks. Foster's Group is the brewer of the Foster's Lager. Foster's Group Limited is a publicly-listed company on the Australian Securities Exchange and is based in Melbourne, Victoria...

 upon its acquisition of Southcorp Wines.
In May 2011 Penfolds, along with the rest of Foster's wine brands, spun off into a separate company listed on the Australian Securities Exchange, Treasury Wine Estates http://www.fostersgroup.com/news/demerger-scheme-effective.aspx.

External links

• Penfolds official site
• Max Schubert's, The Story of Grange Link1 Link 2