The Penfolds Grange 2018 vintage has familiar Familial flavours of a deconstructed Black Forest Cake/Triffle – chocolate, custard, bright wild raspberry; redcurrant. So many other less-obvious flavour ‘distractions’ - mushroom pâté/duxelles, replete with a beefy accompaniment. Notes of sarsaparilla whirled into the mix. Also, an assortment of fresh red and black liquorice – ‘straight out of the bag’. Mouth coating - a confluence of tannin/acidity/oak/fruit – all joyously meshed together.
The 68th consecutive release of Penfolds 2018 Grange – a testament to the multi-regional blending philosophy that underpins Grange DNA, offering an abundance of complexity.
This vintage has received an extraordinary eight perfect 100 point scores from leading wine critics.
100 Points - Andrew Caillard MW
100 Points - Ken Gargett, World of Fine Wine
100 Points - Tony Love
100 Points - Wine Pilot
100 Points - Nick Stock JamesSuckling.com
100 Points - Lisa Perrotti-Brown
100 Points - Anders Enquiest, Livets Goda
100 Points - Wilfred Williw Wong, Wine.com
20/20 - André Kunz, Weinzeitung
99 Points - Wine Advocate
99 Points - Huon Hooke, The Real Review
"Deep colour. Beautiful and classic with intense blackberry, blackcurrant dark chocolate espresso aromas and wax polish, roasted chestnut, malt notes. Superbly concentrated wine with deep set inky blackberry, blackcurrant, dark plum, dark chocolate mocha flavours, fine chocolaty/ velvety tannins, underlying espresso, malt, oak notes and hints of aniseed. Finishes chocolaty firm with superbly integrated acidity and mineral length. A glorious year for Grange. This will last 50 years at least. Wonderful. One of the greatest vintages of all time highlighting a superb growing season, marvellous vineyard management, the fidelity of the Penfolds housemaking style and generations of imagination and effort. 97% Shiraz, 3% Cabernet Sauvignon. Barossa Valley, McLaren Vale and Clare Valley. 18 months maturation in 100% new American oak hogsheads. Drink 2030 -2060+."
100 Points - Andrew Caillard MW, The Vintage Journal
"A much-awaited vintage that fulfils expectations and then some. It has all the elements that you come to expect but still you have to sit back and marvel that so much can be going on inside one wine. Firstly, it simply ain’t Grange unless it is wearing its traditional American oak coat, and this iteration isn’t going to shy away from that. But perhaps it is the generosity across the board of South Australia’s 2018 vintage that gathers in 18 months of barrel maturation, puts shape to its broad-shouldered dark fruits, turns oak notes into chocolate and sarsaparilla characters on one side of the brain and beef and mushroom braise in the other. All in all, it is a fabulous balance of inputs: big fruit, classically prominent oak, all its structural tannins and acidity fitting cleverly into one exceptionally complex and engaging being. Palate length is indefinite, perhaps suggesting similar cellaring potential well into the second half of the 21st century. Magnificent."
100 Points - Tony Love, Wine Pilot
"97% Shiraz, 3% Cabernet Sauvignon. As is custom, it spent 18 months in 100% new American oak. It’s sourced from the Barossa Valley, McLaren Vale and, interestingly, the Clare Valley.
A substantial Grange release, poised, creamy, saturated with dark berried flavour, vanillin but appropriately so. Rarely does tannin come, when it’s as robust as it is here, so saturated in flavour, start to finish, sun up to sun down. Pan juices flow, fruit commands, tannin blows the roof off things. This is a big release, bigger (in memory at least) than the previous few releases – it has a CMYK blacker-than-black density to it – but its quality is ballistic. Take the stereotype of new world red wine, push its quality to its outer limits and then push it out yet further again, and you have this wine. Grange for the true believers, maybe not, but one for the new believers, definitively."
98 Points - Campbell Mattinson, The Wine Front, July 2022, Drink: 2028 - 2048+
