Henschke’s Back-to-Back Perfection – 2016 Hill of Grace

South Australia’s Henschke winery has released a very strong trio of their top shiraz wines from the 2016 vintage. I visited the winery in late 2020 to taste several of their new releases with winemaker Stephen Henschke, including their flagship Henschke Shiraz Eden Valley Hill of Grace 2016, which follows in the footsteps of their equally superb 2015 vintage. They are, however, discernibly different wines.

The Hill of Grace Vineyard, in the elevated and more remote Eden Valley section of the Barossa, is a heritage piece with a significant section of the vineyard home to vines plated in the 1860s. These ancient vines have been nurtured carefully by viticulturist Prue Henschke and contribute some of the most important components of the blend each year. They provide a certain ballast for the wine, promoting a very consistent character within the conversation of vintage difference.

The 2016 vintage comes from a season with a warmer than average December but then a more moderate run through January to harvest, which occurred from March 9 to March 14. It was a slightly earlier harvest than 2015 and one that saw vines run smoothly through the post-veraison ripening period, developing flavors early and producing tannins that have impressive detail and fine-grained texture.

The layering of tannin in this 2016 release is a real highlight of the style, built throughout various old vine parcels, and offering a wine that is multifaceted and already so complex on release, yet one that has a very long capability for ageing. “2016 was actually a slightly more challenging lead-up to vintage … with some stress over summer producing smaller berries,” Stephen Henschke said. “But the weather from veraison onwards was perfect, giving us concentrated and plush wines.”

Hill of Grace’s innate complexity and long, detailed tannin quality is a hallmark of this wine year in, year out, and the 2016 certainly possesses great length and concentration. The intensity of flavors framed in fine yet strikingly linear tannin equates to a very composed wine with contained power. The balance is pitch perfect. It is a vintage of extreme pedigree.

By comparison, the 2015 Hill of Grace is rather more opulent and openly fleshy in its youth and really encompasses a full-volume expression of fruit intensity in a vivaciously youthful way. It is a more expansive style. "2015 was a goldilocks season, giving us almost perfect examples of the wine structure and the unique vineyard flavors,” Henschke explained – and you see this in the ebullient nature of the wine it produced.

Also just released, the Henschke Shiraz Eden Valley Hill of Roses 2016 is a wine made from a section of the Hill of Grace vineyard that was planted in 1989 to Prue Henschke's massale selection of the best vines selected from the old vine parcels. Each year this wine closes the gap on Hill of Grace, and this 2016 is an excellent release. It is also a wine that naturally traces the same path of vintage style as Hill of Grace, yet it renders a more elemental expression of this site, albeit to a very high level of quality and detail – especially so in 2016.

Nearby in the Eden Valley is the Henschkes' more-than-century-old Mount Edelstone Vineyard, and the Henschke Shiraz Eden Valley Mount Edelstone Vineyard 2016 is an exceptional release, albeit in a style of its own. Where Hill of Grace is intensely nuanced, Mount Edelstone is a seductively plush, fleshy and velvety rendition of spicy, pure and concentrated Eden Valley shiraz. It is bursting with rich plum and blackberry fruits all dusted in pepper and spice and already very seductive and supple.

HISTORY LESSON: The story of Henschke Hill of Grace.

A TASTE IN TIME: James Suckling and Prue Henschke taste the 2006 Hill of Grace.

“I think that of all the shiraz vineyards in Eden Valley, due to its vine age, location, aspect and soils, Mount Edelstone shows the greatest typicity of place,” Henschke said.

The newly released 2016 vintage is certainly one of the greatest Mount Edelstone releases to date and will deliver two decades and more in your cellar, alongside its neighbors, Hill of Grace and Hill of Roses.

Enjoy these new wines.

– Nick Stock, Contributing Editor