My Article: Is Grange Real Aussie Wine?

As I travel across Australia in search of #realaussiewine, I have to ask myself if an iconic wine such as Penfold’s Grange is real Aussie wine? It may sound like a strange question, but does a wine such as Grange really represent the best Australia has to offer in wine today?

Nobody can question Grange being a great wine, a wine with wonderful pedigree for Australia. I have tasted dozens of vintages myself in the last five years back into the 1950s. And all the wines are still excellent quality. New vintages are outstanding quality as well.

But Grange is a blend of grapes from various appellations throughout Australia; therefore, it has no true provenance. In other words, Grange has no real “somewhereness,” and for me, #realaussiewine has to have that.

Great wines, no matter where they come from – Pomerol, Tuscany, Volnay or wherever – must tell you where they are from. With each sip, they must speak to you about their origins – that unique piece of soil on earth where they were born. Otherwise, they are just outstanding wines.

When my colleague Rosanne Quagliata was organizing this trip to Australia, I mistakenly asked her to set up a visit to Grange. “I want to see the vineyard of the top wine of Australia,” I thought to myself. But there’s no one unique vineyard of Grange to visit! Its winery is at the Magill Estate of Penfolds. I still may go but it’s sort of disappointing.

The point was hammered home yesterday as I left the wine estate of Giaconda, when I mentioned Grange to my tasting colleague Ned Goodwin, and he said that the wine largely represented the “anti-thesis” of what we are doing on this trip through Australia, which is to search for wines of place.

The most fascinating point of my trip at the moment is all the different vineyards with their unique soils and microclimates. There are not only regional styles of Australian wines, but vineyard styles, just like the other great wine appellations of the world. I am just getting to know them now as I visit many of the key regions and top wineries. And I am loving it.

Unfortunately, Grange is an icon for generalizing about Australian wine. It is a blend of Australian wines to a style of winery or brand. Its quality and historical significance can’t be questioned and it represents the Penfolds' style. But it doesn’t fit my definition of #realaussiewine as I travel across this great wine continent.