The winery was founded by Englishman Dr Christopher Rawson Penfold (1811-1870) and his wife Mary in 1844 near Adelaide in the Barossa Valley (South Australia). This makes it one of the oldest Australian wineries. The doctor had studied medicine in London and was convinced of the positive medical effect of wine. With vines brought from France, he planted the first vineyard in Magill near his stone house known as "The Grange" (small estate). For over a hundred years, they produced mainly sherry and port style fortified wines and brandies, most of which were exported to England. After the death of the founder, his wife Mary took over the running of the business. She was succeeded in 1884 by her daughter Georgina and her husband Thomas Hyland. In 1881, the annual production was already around 500,000 litres.
The family business was converted into a company in 1921. The vineyards were extensively expanded. During the Second World War (1939-1945), the production of fortified wines in the sherry and port styles increased again. After the war, Jeffrey Penfold Hyland took over the management of the company and switched production back to table wines. The family remained at the helm of the company in 1976. In that year Penfolds was taken over by the Tooth & Co brewery, who then sold it to Adelaide Steamship in 1982. They eventually sold all their wineries to the multi Southcorp in 1990. This was then taken over by drinks multinational Foster's in 2005, who in May 2011 spun off all wine activities into a separate company called Treasury Wine Estates, which now includes the former Penfolds Group.
In addition to the parent company in Magill, a second winery is operated in Nuriootpa in the Barossa Valley. The grapes are supplied by over 200 contract winegrowers who cultivate a total vineyard area of around 500 hectares. These are widely scattered in numerous Australian wine-growing regions such as Barossa Valley, Clare Valley, Coonawarra, McLaren Vale, Hunter Valley and Riverina. One and a half million bottles of wine are produced annually. The famous wine pioneer Max Schubert (1915-1994) became the winery's chief winemaker after the Second World War. He travelled to Spain in 1950 to learn about sherry making and also visited Bordeaux in France. From there, he took back home knowledge about new fermentation techniques and barrique ageing in order to implement it there.
He created the famous "Penfolds Grange" in 1951. The red wine known as "Grange" or as "Bin 95" is considered one of the best and most expensive wines in the world and is called the "Premier Cru of the Southern Hemisphere". Until 1989 it was called "Penfolds Grange Hermitage", the addition was omitted due to EU regulations. It is blended from a high proportion of Shiraz from various sites, usually over 90%, with a little Cabernet Sauvignon. Some vintages are also produced as single varietals (e.g. 1951, 1952, 1963, 1999, 2000 and 2001). The wine is matured for 18 months in small American oak barrels and is only marketed after at least three years of bottle ageing. The original 1,800 bottles were not sold at the time, but given away or used for tasting. There are believed to be 35 bottles left, 15 of which are in complete vintage collections. Record prices are regularly achieved at auctions for bottles of this 1951 vintage, these were AU$ 52,211 ($ 35,767) in 2004 and even AU$ 142,131 (€ 88,000) in 2021.
Max Schubert developed an ingenious system of numbered barrels, so-called bins (bin = container), for the storage/ageing of wines from the early 1960s onwards. In addition to the famous Grange, Penfolds' product range includes a number of other red wines, such as Bin 707, RWT (Red Winemaking Trial), St. Henri and Magill Estate. The Bin 389 is also often referred to as the "Baby Grange", as it matures in barrels previously used for the Grange. In 1998, the first white "Grange" was produced under the name "Penfolds Yattarna Chardonnay". Small quantities of liqueurs are also produced. The winery is one of the few to offer the special service of re-corking, whereby the best products or vintages are sensory tested after 25 years at the earliest, if necessary topped up with original wine from that vintage and re-corked. This is called "Penfolds Wine Clinics".
A very special project of Penfolds is "Ampoule", a wine from the vineyard "Kalimna" in the Moppa area of the Barossa Valley. At the edge of this vineyard is the ten-acre (4 ha) "Block 42", which is planted with ungrafted Cabernet Sauvignon vines planted in the mid-1880s and spared from phylloxera. The yields from these ancient vines are extremely low. The grapes have an extraordinary aroma and are normally used in the wine "Bin 707". Only in very special years is a truly exquisite red wine made from these grapes in very small quantities. So far, this has only happened in the years 1953, 1961, 1963, 1964, 1996 and 2004. From the 2004 vintage, only 12 units were bottled in very special containers with a bottle volume of 0.75 litres.
The wine, from vines that were 120 years old at the time, is contained in a mouth-blown, cylindrical glass vial. This vial, in turn, is fixed in an elongated, conical-shaped glass sculpture in the form of a plumb bob, which is housed in a container made of jarrah wood (one of the noblest woods of all). The 12 containers were created by hand by four renowned Australian artists or designers. The making can be seen on YouTube in a video (click to view). In August 2012, one such unit changed hands for a whopping €160,000. The buyer was a regular guest of the Austrian five-star hotel "Jagdhof" in Neustift (Stubaital, Tyrol). The sale was arranged by the hotel's head sommelier Matthias Tanzer. This exceptional crescent is one of the most expensive wines in the world.
C. R. Penfold: State Library of South Australia
all other pictures: Penfolds
