Having spent the start of the Northern Hemisphere summer focusing on Old World wines of various regions, colours, styles, and prices, this week the Listed section is feeling flush and has journeyed Down Under to take a look at Australia’s five most expensive wines.
Leading the way is Penfolds Bin 60A at a cool £430 per bottle. The rarest of the rare, this has only been produced twice – once in 1962 and again in 2004 as a reaction to the vintage conditions being very similar to those from 42 years previously. As might be expected given that it is only produced in the very best vintages, the 2004 is a worthy follow-up to the fabled 1962, achieving a formidable Quality score (976). Fortunately, Wine Lister’s partner critics expect it to be drinking well until 2040, which might just give enough opportunity for a third bottling in the meantime.
Penfolds features twice more on the list, with its flagship Grange (£330) and Bin 707 Cabernet Sauvignon (£222). Grange is Australia’s strongest Brand (991) and also enjoys the country’s top Economics score (916). The former is the result of being both Australia’s best-represented wine in the world’s top restaurants (visible in 34%) and also its most popular, receiving on average 21,118 searches each month on Wine-Searcher, four times more than any other Australian wine. The Bin 707 is more of an anomaly in the group, its Quality score (859) over 100 points below the rest. Whilst its Economics score (871) can’t quite match Grange’s, it has comfortably achieved superior growth rates over the past three years, with a Compound Annual Growth Rate of 13% compared to its more renowned stablemate’s 8%.
Australia’s second most expensive wine is Torbreck’s The Laird (£416). First produced in 2005, it enjoys Australia’s best Quality score (984), but, similarly to Penfolds Bin 60A, its Brand score is unable to keep pace (635). This is probably the result of the fact that very few vintages of it are available and it has an average annual production of just 6,750 bottles each year – it is perhaps too young to have built up a significant following and there are not enough bottles of it for restaurants to get hold of.
Rounding off the group in third place is Henschke’s Hill of Grace Shiraz (£388). Again, this has an excellent average Quality score (961). It also achieves Australia’s second-best Brand score (913), present in 19% of the world’s top establishments – sommeliers are clearly very confident in the wine’s quality.
Having stopped off last week in Syrah’s spiritual home – the Northern Rhône – in search of the region’s leading wines for the 2015 vintage, this week Wine Lister’s Listed section ventures to Australia, surely Syrah’s most famous home from home. Australian Shiraz might differ stylistically from the Northern Rhône’s finest Syrahs, but the Land Down Under’s foremost brands have certainly managed to establish themselves as a force to be reckoned with on the international fine wine market.
Penfolds’ flagship Grange is Australia’s runaway leader in the Brand category. Its formidable score of 991 is not only 75 points ahead of Australia’s second strongest brand – Henschke Hill of Grace Shiraz – but also nudges ahead of the Northern Rhône’s top brand – Jaboulet Hermitage La Chapelle. Whilst Grange can’t quite match La Chapelle in terms of the number of the world’s top restaurants in which it features (34% vs 43%), establishments in which it does appear list 1.5 times more vintages / formats on average (4.5 vs 3.0). Grange is also considerably more popular than La Chapelle, receiving nearly twice as many searches each month on Wine-Searcher. Within Australia no other wine comes close to its level of brand strength. It is visible in nearly twice as many restaurants as the group’s next-best wine in the criterion – Henschke Hill of Grace Shiraz – and is searched for almost five times more frequently than the second-most popular wine of the five – Penfolds St. Henri Shiraz. Last year’s release of g3, a blend of 2008, 2012, and (the as yet unreleased) 2014 Grange will only serve to secure Grange’s standing as Australia’s top brand. Click here to see all of Grange’s vintages. Confirming Penfolds as Australia’s most prestigious producer, the St. Henri Shiraz bookends the top five with a score of 852.
Other than Grange, the only Australian wine to enjoy a Brand score above the 900-point mark – and thus making the “strongest” band on Wine Lister’s 1,000-point scale – is Henschke Hill of Grace Shiraz (916). As previously mentioned, Eden Valley’s leading light achieves the group’s second-best level of restaurant presence. It is also the third-most popular wine of the five, receiving 4,107 searches each month on average and, notably, is by far the most expensive of the group.
The two remaining spots are filled by Torbreck Run Rig and Clarendon Hills Astralis Shiraz (894 and 862 respectively). Whilst they receive a very similar number of searches each month, Torbreck Run Rig edges ahead thanks to superior restaurant presence (17% vs 11%) – presumably in part due to producing over twice as many bottles each year as Clarendon Hills Astralis.