Steve Lienert, Penfolds’ senior red winemaker was in town on Friday night to launch the 2006 Grange and I grabbed him before any wine was poured to get the sober lowdown.
Before answering any questions, he was a good sport and agreed to do an Unfiltered…
Grange & sense of place
Is Penfolds Grange a terroir wine? Fruit is sourced from up to five different regions each year, so the answer is probably no. It doesn’t make it any less worthy although Burgundy purists might poo-pooh it. This vintage is 98% Shiraz with the majority coming from the Barossa, a little bit from Magill Estate in Adelaide and, 2% Cabernet Sauvignon from Coonawarra “to tighten up the palate,” says Lienert.
Quantity and quality
Low yields = high quality. That’s the general rule but 1982 Burgundy blows that theory out the water. Lienert has found that the theory isn’t necessarily useful for then either. While most Grange vineyards crop at 1-1.5 tonne/acre, Lienert adds “Most of our great vintages have had good-sized crops. 1996 and 1998 were classic years but higher yields while 2000 yields were very low but it was not necessarily a great year.”
2011 vintage
This year has been a “challenging” vintage in the Barossa, which means bloody hard. The rains across Australia, caused all sorts of fungal diseases. which wiped out as much as 30% of the crop in areas like inland Mildura. It did rain in the Barossa but it was not as badly affected as other areas , including the Limestone Coast region.
Lienert adds: “We had to be more selective this year. We rejected some fruit because of botrytis. Barossa and McLaren Vale were the stand out for us. The south-east of South Australia was more challenging.”
Winemaking
Ok, so this last section is for wine geeks and MW students…
Grange normally stays on skins for 5-6 days, and they rack and return (aka delestage) the wines to extract colour, tannin and give the wine plenty of aeration. Surprisingly, they don’t use any inert gases to prevent oxidation, such as nitrogen or carbon dioxide, until bottling. They basically don’t want to mollycoddle them, as Lienert put it: “When you were five, I bet your mum and dad gave you a smack on the bum? Did it do you any harm? You worked out well.”
The fermentation is taken up to 26-27C at the start of the fermentation and then cooled back to 16-18C once the wine has reached around 5-6% alcohol. “We don’t want bitterness. You can extract more colour when the wine is warmer but then you extract bitter tannins,” he says. (NB: tannins are alcohol soluble)
The wines are pressed before they reach dryness and no post fermentation is necessary as they can extract enough colour without it.
Despite no time on skins post fermentation, VA levels tend to be quite high in Grange around 0.8-0.9g/l (the EU maximum is 1.2g/l for reds). The reason is the liberal exposure to oxygen encourages volatile acidity during the fermentation. However, it adds a little lift to the wine rather than making it smell like vinegar!
