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Penfolds recorking clinic unearths secret Grange
Penfolds winemakers inspected 230 bottles of Penfolds in London yesterday, including one “secret” Grange, at the brand’s first recorking clinic in the UK since 2008.
Peter Gago and Steve Lienert flew into the capital for the clinic, which attracted as many as 30 collectors of Penfolds wines, primarily owners of the brand’s top labels: Grange, St Henri and Bin 707.
Speaking to the drinks business after the clinic had closed, Penfolds chief winemaker Peter Gago said that recorking customers’ collections always yielded interesting wines.
“There are surprises at every clinic,” he said, before producing a cork from a bottle of 1956 St Henri Shiraz, which had been recorked yesterday for a customer.
“The bottle was beautiful, and we got it just in time,” he added, explaining that the recorking process would arrest deterioration from leakage, although it wouldn’t give the wine an extra lease of life.
Meanwhile, fellow Penfolds winemaker Steve Lienert told db that his highlight of the day was a bottle of 1959 Grange – the last of three “hidden vintages” from Penfolds, so-called because they were made “in secret” by winemaker Max Shubert from 1957-59 when he was forbidden from making the range-topping blend.
Peter Gago at Penfold’s recorking clinic in London’s Berkeley hotel
Describing the bottle as “wonderful”, Lienert said that the wine would have been made without the use of new oak, as Schubert couldn’t order any barrels for the top end blend, which he wasn’t supposed to be making.
Continuing, he said the owner of the wine, who was British, had “stored it well”, adding, “We very rarely see anything from the 50s, so this was a real treat.”
Penfolds has been holding recorking clinics for 22 years, and, as previously reported by db, has recorked and certified around 120,000 bottles.
Any Penfolds wine over 15 years old is eligible for the free service, which sees bottles inspected for leakage or low ullage by Gago and his team of winemakers.
Where necessary, the wines are topped up with a more recent vintage of the same wine, recorked and then wrapped in tissue paper, and Gago stressed that the wines will only ever be recorked once.
If, however, the wine is not in good condition, it is given a “white dot”, and the Penfolds’ winemaking team advises the owner to consume it, or dispose of the wine.
Gago said that recorking clinics held in countries or areas with a cool climate generally yielded wines in better condition.
However, a recorking clinic in Singapore earlier this year featured as many as 450 bottles and, despite the city’s tropical climate, there were almost no rejections.
Gago explained, “In Singapore people either drink the wine the day they buy it, or cellar it properly.”
He also said that the recorking scheme could be called an “authenticity clinic” as it gave Penfolds the chance to discover poor or counterfeit bottles.
As an example, he said he had once assessed a 1964 Penfolds St Henri, which smelt like cold tea – and that’s because, he recalled, “it was cold tea”.
On the other hand, Gago added that he often finds himself persuading collectors not to re-cork their wines because the bottles are in perfect condition.
Next year, Penfolds plan to host recorking clinics in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US, while Gago said he would also like to hold one in Mongolia.
“We haven’t done one in Mongolia yet, but Leighton Holdings and Rio Tinto are there and the people who work for them go there with their wine.”
In total, 230 bottles were recorked, including a rare 1956 St Henri worth AU$7000
This was a fascinating article, but it left some glaring questions: Why was Max Shubert forbidden from making the blend from 1957-59? Was it really ‘cold tea’ in the bottle? How does the ‘topping up’ affect the wine character vs. trying to seal it in a way that wouldn’t adulterate it yet reduce oxidization?
Thank you Ray. I’ve contact Penfolds and please see their response:
The first experimental vintage of Grange was in 1951. In 1957 Schubert was asked to show Grange to management and wine critics in Sydney, but to his horror the wine was dismissed with one critic in particular observing “Schubert, I congratulate you. A very good dry port, which no one in their right mind will buy – let alone drink.” Max was ordered to cease production, but continued making the wine in secret… thus the term ‘hidden Grange’. He cut down on expenses by using old barrels instead of new and paying cellar hands with bottles of wine. One of the main problems was Grange was being drunk as a very young wine, which is why today Penfolds only releases the wine 5 years after vintage.
Yes it really was cold tea. We’ve all been guilty of taking particularly nice (empty) bottles away from dinners or tastings. Some people go a step further, fill it up and put the capsule back on and display it as a trophy, with perfectly innocent intentions. In the cold tea incident the person had passed away and the relatives assumed they had discovered a valuable old bottle of Grange which they brought into the clinic for assessment, unfortunately it wasn’t the result they were looking for.
The topping up process is never more than 15ml and involves only 2% of the liquid in the bottle. Penfolds has conducted numerous trials and tastings which concluded you can’t tell the difference between the original and re-corked bottle. It’s important to note that Penfolds will only re-cork the bottle once, otherwise you’d be looking at 4% of the bottle being topped up… and on and on… which would clearly begin to alter the integrity of the bottle. Penfolds don’t re-cork every bottle which comes in, where the ullage level is good then the wine is likely to be in good condition and a recommendation would be made not to re-cork, if the ullage is too low then the wine is likely to be in bad condition and more than 15ml would be required for topping up which would affect the character too much.