Penfolds' G3

by Max Allen 

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."

Focusing on the way g3 is made is also a departure from previous Penfolds luxury releases, which have felt at times as though style triumphed over substance: the dozen handcrafted "Ampoules" of Block 42 cabernet sauvignon offered in 2012 for AU$168,000 each, for example, when normal bottles of the same wine sold for $600, or the seven, 6-litre imperials of 2010 Block 3C shiraz sold in bespoke wooden Linley cases for AU$65,000 each in 2014.

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