There are 1,200 bottles of the new beauty. It’s called Penfolds G3, and it’s $3,000 a pop. It’s a blend of three Granges: 2008; 2012 and 2014, that were selected, assembled, and aged in barrels as a blend before bottling.
The wine will be available from the Penfolds cellar door at Magill.
Australia has a new king of the hill in the price per bottle category. I wonder if it’ll sell much at all, especially given it appears to be a cellar door only wine.
Sorry, I should say the Penfolds Ampoule containing the 2004 Kalimna Block 42 Cabernet Sauvignon was MUCH more expensive but that was imo more marketing gimmick than serious product line given only 12 were made.
Grange was already stupid expensive. This is just stupid.
For about the same price I’ll take a half case of Chave Hermitage and Allemand Reynard, and throw in a few Saxum and Alban in case you like something riper.
That’s my view. About the only way I could see Penfolds selling this wine successfully is if they were able to offload it to the Chinese market where they have good brand recognition. That said given it’s apparently a cellar door only wine I don’t see how that would work in practice.
I never really felt in my bones where the astronomical Grange price appreciation came from. It just sort of happened.
I guess it’s just that the spiking demand wasn’t coming from anywhere I know or see - maybe it was in Australia and/or SE Asia.
I’ve only had it once, back in 2004 (the 1997 vintage), and I own one bottle (the 1999). I never see or hear about it at tastings - I’m guessing that 1999 will be the only other time I have it.
As such, I’m not sure how much I am or am not missing, but you you can’t have everything, so onward and forward.
I’m a bit on the fence to be honest John. On the one hand I think throwing 4 barriques of Grange into a MV blend is a pretty big gamble considering how much money Penfolds could make if they sold it as straight vintage bottlings. On the other hand given the oceans of Grange produced annually maybe it’s not quite as significant as I imagine. Production numbers aren’t readily available but apparently they make 5,000 to 15,000 cases of Grange per annum. So taking the averages the G3 would represent ~1% of Grange production if you use a 10,000 cases per annum figure.
Its a race to the top. Who can make the most expensive wine in Australia competing against the other world leaders (first growths, Burgundies, Monfortinos).
Its is almost completely targeted to the Chinese market and perhaps to few uber rich in Australia.
I have only a few Grange in the cellar. Last vintage I purchased was 2004 - both for Grange and also the Bin 60A.
I see this as part marketing gimmick to support the brand and part quick money grab. I don’t blame them for trying and suspect they’ll succeed.
I was a regular buyer and drinker of Grange starting with the 1981, which a local wine shop owner opened for me. It was one of my epiphany wines and at $40/btl was far and away the most I had spent at the time. My wife also loved it so we bought every year, but our palates shifted and the price eventually exceeded our QPR threshold. The last bottles we bought were 1998s. Most are gone now, except for a few 1989s.
I dunno about China, but retail prices in AU for most of the better of the (historic) Penfolds labels have increased around 9% every year, year-on-year, for the last twenty years.
In 1996, you’d buy current release Bin 389 for about $15. Twenty years later, the current release is ~$80.
In 1997, Bin 707 was $50, twenty years later it’s $240.
And apart from the price, I think the quality of fruit going into the wines lower in the hierarchy has been declining as ever more premium and prestige labels take the better fruit.
Needless to say, I stopped buying a decade or so ago.
I don’t know what Penfolds local sales figures look like (I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve increased production as well, so it’d be apples and oranges vs history) but I think they’ve basically abandoned their traditional markets in favour of the Asian dollar.
Which is fine; they’re there to make a profit.
But they won’t have me as a buyer again.
cheers,
GRaeme
Penfolds and Grange have always had a following here in BC. Oddly, they have more or less abandoned our marketplace except for rivers of the low end stuff.
This seems consistent with pricing in the US. I used to buy 389 and 407 pretty routinely in the 90s, at $15-20US. 707 could be had for $50-60. I was pretty shocked at the prices recently when I ran into recent vintages of those wines. Exchange rate has probably played a role as well, given that it was quite favorable for US buyers in the 90s.
Hi Neal
See comments by Graeme. Everything from Bin28/128 upwards in the range has been jumping much higher. The last wine I tasted that offered decent value was an early vintage of the Koonunga Hill ‘seventy six’, aimed at the restaurant trade, but briefly available retail. Always the risk this was the old trick of starting a new label with good juice, then letting it slip over time.
Regards
Ian
10 years ago in the restaurant here we could not sell Penfolds wines, but in recent years with the influx of Chinese tourists we have sold out of 707, 389 and RWT at $300 to $900 for magnums. Bin 128 is moving too for those who want an entry into the brand.
Back to the G3, other than port and champagne I don’t know that I’ve ever seen an expensive wine produced from multiple vintages. Are there other examples? Don’t you lose the concept of terroir when you blend vintages? It seems more like a stunt to grab attention rather than a serious project. $3.6M is a drop in the bucket for Penfolds.
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