Grange. Over Priced or Classic?

Ours is a population of collectors. We collect works of art, cars, postage stamps and our Treasurer hoards clocks. Collections are admired, driven, smoked and lived in. Some are even drunk. For the trifling sum of $35,000 you could own a collection of every vintage of Australia’s most prestigious red wine, Penfolds’ Grange Hermitage.

The very first vintage of Grange, made in 1951 and which was never commercially released, will cost you $8,000 per bottle and the scarce but famous 1958 now asks $4,750. The highly-regarded 1971 vintage, which can still be found today and which is beginning to reach its peak quality, is a relative bargain at $500. These prices are courtesy Dan Murphy’s Cellar, Melbourne, who quite possibly have the best collection of Grange Hermitage in existence.

How can an Australian wine possibly fetch these prices, you ask? Price, as ever is a question of supply and demand. The forty-year legend of Grange ensures a continual demand by wine collectors and drinkers alike. The average annual production run of Grange is only 5,000 to 6,000 cases, a mere fraction of the quantity produced by many of the great chateaux of Bordeaux. And with the opening and breakage heaven forbid of every bottle, the supply shortens. Grange has proven to be a wine investment par excellence.

Over a long period of time Grange Hermitage has established itself as one of Australia’s great wines, with a unique track record of quality, consistency of style and mystique. Penfolds today claim that it is Australia’s best red wine, a point of view encouraged by some of the wine media.

Three years ago I wrote in a wine magazine that although Grange was clearly amongst the best of Australia’s wines, it was most certainly not the best. However the three latest releases, from 1982 to 1984, especially the 1982 and the 1984 wines, have clearly shown that Penfolds are upgrading their winemaking practices to keep in touch with modern advances. There is more elegance, balance and drinkability in these young Granges excepting the 1983, progeny of a severe drought, than we have seen for many years.

These three vintages are all superb wines, and do lend weight to the legend. However, something inside me still questions the absolute statement that in 1990, the single best Australian red wine is Grange Hermitage.

Grange’s road to recognition and prestige has been far from easy. When first made it was shunned by the supposed experts of the day, whose criticism had such impact that Penfolds officially ceased its production only five years after the first commercial Grange was made.

The first Grange Hermitage represents one of the great innovations in Australian winemaking. Responsible for it and for Grange’s very existence today is Max Schubert, one of the country’s greatest human assets and winemakers. Now in his late seventies, Schubert is still retained by Penfolds as a consultant and advisor. You don’t let such a wealth of knowledge and experience slip away that easily.

In 1984 Schubert was made a Member of the Order of Australia and in 1988 was chosen Man of the Year by the highly respected English wine magazine, Decanter.

In making the first Grange Hermitage, Schubert took winemaking risks never before taken in Australia. His first innovation was to pump the still fermenting juice, which had nearly been fermented through to dryness, into brand-new American oak hogsheads 250 litre barrels to finish its fermentation. In 1951 while making the experimental Grange, Schubert compared this treatment to a control wine made with more conventional techniques.

In his words, “Whereas the control wine showed all the characteristics of a good, well-made wine cast in the orthodox mould, the experimental wine was strikingly different. The volume of bouquet, comprising raw oak mixed with natural varietal fruit, was tremendous. The overall flavour was much more intense than the control, and for a young wine, the balance was superb”. Grange Hermitage was born.

Schubert then continued to mature the new wine in the same American barrels for around a year, and in doing so also encouraged the deliberate induction of volatile acids which he believed added complexity and intensity to the wine. Herein lies another major risk – if not controlled, these compounds can dominate and ruin a wine.

Grange Hermitage was thereby invented as an individual, high-risk wine, which combined traditional techniques with some that were quite revolutionary in 1951. Today Penfolds continue to follow the same basic principles, with little modification, as they have done for three decades, faithfully retaining the style that Schubert doggedly persevered with. The only real change is that modern Granges are matured in new American oak for between eighteen and twenty months.

The first Grange released commercially was the 1952 vintage. It and other early released drew a negative response from a largely uneducated wine community in Australia. One well-known and respected critic of the day is alleged to have congratulated Max Schubert on his “very good dry port, which no-one in their right mind would buy, let alone drink”.

The wine’s image became so poor that Penfolds officially filed it. However Max Schubert continued to make Grange without Penfolds’ knowledge, in a prohibited but passionate spell from 1957 to 1959, during which he was unable to use the new oak casks normally associated with the wine.

Penfolds officially and finally revived Grange in 1960 after it began to achieve public recognition. It would have been fascinating to watch as the company’s directors first learned what Schubert had been up to in the meantime.

An essential part of Grange’s quality and character is directly related to the selection of the grapes from which it is made. The original Granges were made with fruit from the Grange Vineyard at Magill, from which the wine takes its name, and from Morphett Vale, just outside Adelaide. Penfolds introduced grapes from Kalimna to the wine in 1961, which now account for the major proportion of the fruit, which is supplemented from the company’s Clare and Koonunga Hill vineyards.

Most of the original Grange vineyard is now a housing estate, although Penfolds have preserved the old winery and a few surrounding vines, from which the relatively new and praiseworthy Magill Estate wine is made.

Grapes are selected on the basis of ripeness, richness and fullness of flavour. Grange is almost entirely made from Shiraz, although small amount of cabernet sauvignon are used occasionally. The vineyards ares all extremely low-yielding and non-irrigated, producing crops of only around one and a half tonnes per acre.

The Grange Hermitage currently available is the 1984 vintage, which as far as I can see is exemplary Grange, although comparatively elegant and approachable as a six year-old. Its intense, rich and spicy fruit has huge length and weight, augmented by the generous extent of creamy oak maturation characters. Volatility lifts the nose but doesn’t detract. Typical Grange earthiness, chocolate and ripe berry fruit flavours are evident on the palate, with a perfectly-balanced complement of powerful tannin. It will live long and proud, for at least two decades.

If you want an idea of what the 1984 might do, find a friend with a bottle of 1971, or part with the outrageous amount asked for it. The 1971 Grange says quite eloquently what the wine is about. It’s rich, complex and developed, with a spicy, earthy and slightly volatile nose of vibrant fruit and character and a faint kernel note. Although it’s clearly softened with time, there is still around five years before the tannins yield completely and the wine reaches its top. The palate is super-full and intense with deep fruit and a liquorice-like quality. I curse silently that I drank all mine way back in ’83, when it was nothing more than a twelve year-old pup.

Clearly the 1984 Grange is a wine to buy, to drink or to invest. Either way, I can’t see how you can lose. Please login to post comment