Hong Kong | Penfolds
latest limited-release red wine, a multi-vintage blend of Grange called g3,
signals a move away from recent hyper-exclusive luxury releases by making the
wine itself the hero, not just the packaging.
The company launched g3
yesterday at Hong Kong's Liang Yi Museum, which features priceless furniture
from the Ming and Qing dynasties. Only 1,200 bottles are available and each
comes with a $3,000 price tag.
Chief winemaker Peter
Gago said he expects g3 will attract controversy, not so much because of its
high price but also because of the unusual way it was made.
The wine is a blend of
three vintages of Penfolds most famous red – the 2008, 2012 and
yet-to-be-released 2014 Grange – assembled and matured together in barrel
before bottling
It is a radical
development for the iconic Australian wine, the "recipe" for which
has essentially remained the same since Penfolds winemaker Max Schubert created
the style in the early 1950s.
"For many people,
particularly in Australia, Grange is sacrosanct," Mr Gago said.
"Because this is a whole new concept it may be challenging for them to
appreciate. Which is why we developed it in secret, from start to finish."
The release of Penfolds
g3 is in some ways at odds with major trends in fine wine production. It comes
at a time when most top-shelf producers in Australia – and around the world –
are placing less value on "house style" blends, and more on wines
that express "terroir": single-varietal, single-vineyard – and single
vintage – wines.
The practice of blending
across vintages is not unusual in some areas of the fine wine world. It is
common, for example, to find multi-vintage luxury champagnes: Krug Grande Cuvée
is famously a blend of 120 wines across 12 years. And fortifieds: Penfolds' own
50 Year Old Rare Tawny (which sells for $3,550 a bottle) includes parcels of
very old wine that have been sitting in barrel for up to a century.
Multi-vintage,
ultra-premium red wines, on the other hand, are very rare: one of the few
well-known examples is Spain's coveted Vega Sicilia Reserva Especial.
While it may be unusual
in a modern context, Penfolds g3 is in many ways a return to an old Australian
tradition.
In the 1950s, when Max
Schubert created Grange, it was common to blend wine not just from across
vineyards and regions – something that has been a hallmark of the Grange style
ever since – but also across years.
Legendary winemakers
such as Colin Preece at Seppelt Great Western and Roger Warren at Hardys, both
contemporaries of Schubert, thought nothing of blending vintages of their
"clarets" and "burgundies" if they believed it would
produce a better, more complete wine.
Penfolds is not entirely
alone in reviving this approach. A handful of smaller Australian winemakers
maintain the tradition – producers such as Sami-Odi in the Barossa, who each
year bottle a shiraz called Little Wine that is an assemblage of four vintages.
The "think of a
number and double it" price tag and the location of the launch in Hong
Kong have already attracted criticism from some in the Australian media,
implying the wine company is cynically courting wealthy wine collectors in
Asia, and that g3 is merely an expensive marketing exercise for the Grange and
Penfolds brands.
Mr Gago was unrepentant,
stressing that the development of the wine was "completely one hundred per
cent winemaker driven: this is not a brand extension, this is not a marketing
pursuit."
"But I still wanted
g3 to be controversial," Mr Gago said, eyes twinkling. "Grange should
be about controversy. It always has been."
So what does it taste like?
Penfolds g3 tastes as
you'd expect it to taste – if you've been lucky enough to try a few Granges
before, that is.
There's a depth and
density to the rich black fruit that is a hallmark of Grange, with the fruit
wrapped up in mature flavours of warm oak and damp earth and sweet leather, as
well as youthful characters of dark spice and fine, firm, lingering tannins. In
other words, you can see the contribution that each of the three vintages,
2008, 2012 and 2014, brings to the wine, but it all marries together
seamlessly.
Max Allen travelled to
Hong Kong as a guest of Penfolds to attend the launch of g3
Peter Gago Chief winemaker
