History
The first vintage of Penfolds Grange was made on an experimental basis in 1951 by winemaker Max Schubert, while he was employed by Penfolds Wines. Having toured Europe in 1950, Schubert implemented wine-making techniques observed in Bordeaux upon his return, aiming to create a red wine able to rival the finest Bordeaux wines both in terms of quality and ageing potential.
Individual bottles of the 1951 vintage are still held by collectors; one sold at auction in 2004 for just over A$50,000. The first vintage to be commercially released was the 1952. Penfolds Grange was styled as a powerful still wine in an age when fortified wines were in fashion. Negative reviews by wine critics and poor commercial prospects for the wine led Penfolds management in 1957 to forbid Schubert from producing Penfolds Grange, but Schubert persisted in secret through 1959. As the initial vintages aged, however, their true value came to be appreciated, and in 1960 the management instructed Schubert to restart production, oblivious to the fact that Schubert had never stopped production and had not missed a vintage.
The great 1955 vintage was submitted to competitions beginning in 1962, and over the years has won more than 50 gold medals. The vintage of 1971 won first prize in Shiraz at the Wine Olympics in Paris. The 1990 vintage was named 'Red Wine of the Year' by the Wine Spectator magazine in 1995, which later rated the 1998 vintage 99 points out of a possible 100.
Penfolds Grange also carries a "Bin" designation, referring to its storage location in Penfolds cellars while ageing. 1951 was Bin 1, 1952 was Bin 4, and later vintages carried various designations. By 1964 the designation was standardised as "Bin 95".
By the end of the 1980s the wine came to be regarded as a collectors' item. The name "Hermitage" was dropped from the label with the 1990 vintage, following objections by the European Union authorities to the use of a French place-name; no third-country wine entering EU may carry a geographical name recognized by European wine officials.
Listed in the 4th edition of Langton’s Classification of Australian Wine at the "Exceptional" level, Grange has been in the top Langton classification since 1991.
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