Grange La Chapelle 2022 – the bilingual alchemy continues
In today’s troubled times, cross-cultural, multi-lateral and multi-lingual partnerships seem challenged as never before and increasingly thin on the ground. So it is pleasing to be able to report on the blossoming of a recently forged trans-continental and bilingual alliance – that between Australian superpower Penfolds and icon of the northern Rhône, Domaine La Chapelle, with the second release of Grange La Chapelle.
The wine was officially released on the 9 February – appropriately enough on the Frey Family Stand at the wine world’s most obvious contribution to global multilateralism, Wine Paris (Vinexpo). The inaugural release was held in the suitably magisterial surroundings of the Monnaie de Paris overlooking le Pont des Arts this time last year, and I was one of the lucky few to be present – and to taste the wine – on both occasions.
The wine itself, this time from the 2022 vintage, is a powerful blend of the world’s most revered Syrah and Shiraz and the second release from the partnership between La Chapelle and Penfolds. Embodying Australian boldness and French finesse, Grange La Chapelle 2022 is a wine that speaks two languages fluently yet tells one compelling story. It marks the evolution of this bold partnership and the consolidation of the recently-forged match between these two legends. A long-standing friendship between Caroline Frey, chief winemaker and vigneron at Domaine La Chapelle and Peter Gago, chief winemaker of Penfolds Grange, first inspired this unexpected, unprecedented and unique union. It brings together different geographies, different hemispheres, different soils and different winemaking cultures.
As with the inaugural 2021 release, Grange La Chapelle is the fusion and not simply the product of its parts – neither La Chapelle, nor Grange, nor any simply additive or even interactive combination of the two. Like the fusion of two raw metals in the blend that makes the alloy, this is a genuine – and, crucially, a genuinely transformatory – synthesis. Therein lies its essential alchemy.
The wines remains, and will always remain, a 50-50 blend of La Chapelle, from the steep, sun-drenched slopes of the Hill of Hermitage and Grange made from a collection of the most select of South Australian vineyards: Barossa Valley (87% in this vintage), McLaren Vale and Coonawarra (with many of the vines dating from the 19th-Century). As Peter Gago explained to me at Vinexpo, should a 50-50 blend not work or feel not quite right, then it is not destined that the wine should exist and the vintage will be passed.
That was very far from being the case in 2022, as in 2021 before. As Peter Gago explains, “If 2021 introduced Grange La Chapelle then 2022 welcomes La Chapelle Grange – interchangeably, assuredly, sensitively, convincingly … The right things happened at the right times across the two disparate growing seasons. This 50:50 blend has woven a majestic Syrah/Shiraz exemplar. One for the ages.”
Caroline Frey elaborated, giving a clue as to the shared philosophy that underpins the project: “Grange La Chapelle is a conversation between two hemispheres. With this second vintage, building on the foundation laid in 2021, the identity of the wine is firmly established, carried by the singularity and magic of the 2022 vintage … By uniting two iconic wines, this collaboration achieves something truly ground-breaking. As a vine grower, as a winemaker, it’s so magical, I would have never even dared to imagine it. No one in the world has ever blended two such legendary terroirs. It’s like Picasso and Dalí painting on the same canvas – an idea so extraordinary it almost feels too incredible to be real.”
Partner Content
The wine is rare, and the production tiny, with a small group of Grange and Domaine La Chapelle’s partners around the world personally invited to hand-sell Grange La Chapelle 2022 to their private customers. A small allocation will also be sold by Penfolds directly to consumer channels in Australia and the USA, retailing for AU$3,500 or €2,600 in Europe.
Tasting note
Grange La Chapelle 2022 (Vin du Monde; 50% Shiraz from Grange; 50% Syrah from La Chapelle – so 100% Shi-rah!; pH 3.74; 14% alcohol; the Grange was aged in 100% new oak, the La Chapelle in 15% new oak). Tasted with Delphine Frey & Peter Gago at Vinexpo, Paris on its official release date. This is slightly closed at first (but then it has just traversed the globe!) and it opens slowly but reassuringly, revealing more and more of its secrets as it does so. There’s a creaminess that it somehow conveyed aromatically alongside the slightly dusty, earthy minerality (that, paradoxically, seems indicative of a single place, a single terroir). There’s a little black pepper too and that lovely distinctly gamey element from the Syrah here. There are fresh minty notes with gentle aeration. Eucalyptus too. A little smoke. And the redolent dried florality that I often associate with La Chapelle. In the mouth, this is glossy, indeed almost glass-like and luminous, in its texture. It is quite amply framed, plush and glacial in its purity, with a depth and profundity that is perhaps more redolent of Grange. There’s black chocolate, black cherry and crunchy black berries, walnut and walnut shell, and, more intriguingly, a touch of iodine and almost a hint of peat. It’s incredibly shapely too, even at this nascent stage, and I am struck by the integration of the architectural tannic mesh that holds the wine together. It’s almost as if we’re tasting this from a much larger format, so seamless is the integration and harmony achieved. As this already suggests, the tannins are ultra-fine grained and they pixilate the mid-palate, picking out details and picking up in the process the black pepper spice. The magic is here once again, the alchemy that turns raw precious metals into this perfect fusion achieved once again. 99.
