Why Peter Gago wanted to blend Shiraz from two continents
In an interview with the drinks business in June, Penfolds head winemaker Peter Gago revealed the real reason why he wanted to blend Australian Shiraz with French Syrah – the basis of Grange La Chapelle.
The fine wine comes with a £2,500 price tag and employs grapes from two hemispheres: it takes the best Shiraz in Australia – used for Penfolds’ most famous high-end brand, Grange – and combines it with Syrah from the legendary La Chapelle vineyard on the hill of Hermitage in France’s Northern Rhône.
It’s a 50:50 blend from the two countries – “provocatively and deliberately so,” according to Gago – that was first released with the 2021 vintage in February this year, following news broken by db that such a remarkable combination may be on the cards back in July 2022.
It’s certainly a brave move, which sees the wine from the French vineyard, owned by Domaines Paul Jaboulet Ainé, sent by air to Penfolds’ winemaking facilities in Adelaide, where it is blended with the Australian producer’s pinnacle expression of Shiraz, before further ageing at the winery and then bottling there too.
The final stage has to be completed in Australia, because “it would be illegal to bottle this [a multinational] blend in France with the regulations,” said Gago, noting that the prized Syrah from France is sent in temperature-monitored 1,000 litre tanks.
So why do it – after all, it’s both rule-breaking and risky? Well for Gago, who teamed up with Jaboulet’s winemaker Caroline Frey to create the high-priced, cross-continental blend, it was to put more of a fine wine spotlight on the single grape used for Grange La Chapelle.
“It is to elevate the status of Syrah/Shiraz,” he said, when showing the wine to UK press in London earlier this year.
Why might that be necessary, db asked Gago in a subsequent interview, which can be listened to in full above? Because the so-called King of red grapes – Cabernet Sauvignon – “gets all the love”, according to Gago, doubtless referring to its celebrated role in the great wines of Bordeaux, as well as Napa, along with other parts of the world, such as Tuscany, or countries like Chile and South Africa – where it tends to be the basis of the best wines. Then it’s the grape’s presence at Penfolds too, where it’s used to make the prized Bin 707 – a wine with incredible status, and so hard to perfect, it’s not made every year.
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Shiraz, on the other hand, although the main component of Penfolds’ icon wine Grange does, as a grape, have an image that “ebbs and flows” in Gago’s view – unlike the constant high-level appreciation for Cabernet.
“Every now and then Shiraz does need a bit of love and attention,” he said, speaking about its relatively unrecognised role in the finest wines of the world today.
Looking back, its fine wine status was certain. Gago recalled, “In the early days, one of the big, big, big Master of Wine tastings was a Grange and La Chapelle masterclass” – involving an educational analysis of the two great expressions, both made from Shiraz/Syrah, to showcase the ultimate in red wine quality, worldwide.
However, in recent times, the spotlight does seem to have shifted away from the grape, although the quality of wines made from it are now better than ever – a point made by Gago when speaking about the latest release of Grange last month.
Indeed, the issue is not one of wine quality, but grape image, which itself, may be due to a lack of marketing – and hence the urge to make some headlines about the greatness of the grape with Grange La Chapelle (as well as test the idea that blends can be better than the sum of their parts, even when they cross regional, as well as national boundaries).
“You know, Coca-Cola is quite an interesting soft drink proposition – and yet they never stop advertising, they never stop promoting,” said Gago, drawing an analogy.
With Syrah/Shiraz, similarly, for Gago, “you can never give it enough love.”
In other words, there hasn’t been enough noise made about the brilliance of blends based on the grape variety. Or, put another way, it’s time to start talking more about the fine wine potential of Shiraz.
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As a lifelong Syrah lover, I admire the boldness of blending two icons like Grange and La Chapelle to spotlight the grape. But at £2,500 a bottle, it feels more like a collector’s trophy than a shared celebration. For the same outlay, one could taste multiple vintages of each wine side-by-side — arguably a more instructive and rewarding way to appreciate them. Elevating status is great, but I’d love to see the spotlight paired with accessibility so more Syrah lovers can join the conversation.