Wine & Spirits - Winter 2019 - 81

NEW WO RLD

Top 100 Wineries

Penfolds

Concha y Toro

SOUTH AUSTRALIA
From the Koonunga Hill blends to Grange and special bins, the
Penfolds portfolio defines great South Australian wine.

CHILE
Chile's leader earned its 25th Top 100 award with exceptional
Maipo cabernet, Peumo carmenère, and pinot noir and
chardonnay from Limarí.

WHEN MAX SCHUBERT WAS APPOINTED the first
chief winemaker at Penfolds in 1948, the winery
was in transition. The Penfolds family had been
producing fortified wines for the last century.
Under Schubert's leadership, the team began to
develop table wines, including the first vintage
of his experimental barrel-fermented benchmark
shiraz, the 1951 Grange Hermitage. By 2002,
when Peter Gago became the fourth chief winemaker at Penfolds, Grange was already a legend,
and Gago was tasked with seemingly nonstop
world travel as its ambassador while leading
the winemaking team as it managed fruit for a
broad portfolio of wines. The Penfolds hierarchy defines each bin wine by style rather than
vineyard designation. Yet their growers clubs
and rigorous benchmark tastings create a system
that reliably ties the wines back to vineyards and
terroir, with the top fruit from estate vineyards
and elite growers building wines like Grange, Bin
707 cabernet and other definitive South Australian bottlings. Those wines have earned Penfolds
27 Top 100 awards, more than any winery in the
world. -J.G.

PETER
GAGO

MARCELO
PAPA

2014 South Australia Grange Shiraz ($850, 96
points) A plump, succulent Grange with complex layers of flavor, this wine is completely savory and ripe.
The flavors might bring to mind black olive, black
currant and seedy blackberries, accelerated by the
espresso scents of new oak. There's a restrained,
slow-motion mineral explosion in the end, taking days
to develop, lasting with a formality and elegance that
belies the wine's intoxicating richness.

FOUNDED

1844

WINEMAKER:

Peter Gago
VITICULTURIST:

George Taylor
OWNER: Treasury
Wine Estates
ACRES OWNED: N/A
CASES PRODUCED:

N/A
ESTATE GROWN:

N/A
IMPORTER:

Treasury Wine
Estates, Napa, CA

2015 South Australia St. Henri Shiraz ($150, 94
points) While Max Schubert was developing Grange
in the 1950s, John Davoren was experimenting with
top-flight fruit aged in large oak vats for St. Henri. It's
shiraz structured on fruit tannins, and this 2015 has
the clarity, density and tight kernel of blue-black fruit
that's identifiably St. Henri: the blackness of iron and
a salty, mineral edge that surrounds the fruit and
holds it tight.

1883
Viña
Concha y Toro
(publicly traded)

2016 Puente Alto Don Melchor Puente Alto Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon ($120, 95 points) Now
in its 30th vintage, Don Melchor grows at a 324-acre
vineyard devoted to the wine. This 2016 has the lean
build of a marathon runner, dynamic and graceful in
its structural intensity and black-currant freshness.
The tannins have the clarity of cabernet rooted in
river stones, the fruit cooled by winds from the Andes.
Viña Don Melchor will become an independent brand
with the release of the 2017 vintage.

FOUNDED:
OWNER:

WINEMAKER:

Marcelo Papa
VITICULTURIST:

Max Larraín
2016 South Australia Yattarna Chardonnay
($130, 93 points) This is Penfolds' top chardonnay,
a blend of fruit from cool-climate regions-Tasmania,
Adelaide Hills, Henty in Victoria and Tumbarumba,
at the edge of the Snowy Mountains in New South
Wales. It's a wine with energy and length, picking
up a scent of hazelnut cream from eight months
in French oak barrels (35 percent new). Its toasty,
savory weave takes New World chardonnay style in a
cool direction.

CONCHA Y TORO DATES TO THE first wave of modern Chilean viticulture, the mid-19th century,
when the wealthy mining families of Santiago
brought viticulturists from Bordeaux to the
Maipo Valley, just south of town. Its contemporary portfolio began taking shape in the 1980s,
when the Guilisasti and Larraín families, who
maintain a controlling interest in the public
company, worked with Pablo Morandé to parse
the Tocornal Vineyard, a terrace on the north
bank of the Maipo River. By studying the soils,
he created one sector for Almaviva, the joint
venture with Baron Philippe de Rothschild, and
another for Don Melchor. Enrique Tirado joined
the team in 1997 to focus on both projects, while
Ignacio Recabarren created an elegant style of
cabernet from the Pirque estate, on the south
bank of the Maipo. Recabarren mentored Marcelo Papa, who went on to refashion the firm's
$10 Casillero del Diablo wines, and then Marqués de Casa Concha, delivering a $25 cabernet
from Puente Alto that blows away most anything
at twice the price. Papa now heads up the winemaking team, offering remarkable wines at varied levels of ambition and price, from fruity varietal bottlings to resonant expressions of Chile's
diverse terroirs. -J.G.

ACRES OWNED:

24,508 (in Chile)
CASES PRODUCED:

33,000,000
ESTATE GROWN:

50% (for premium
& superior lines)
IMPORTER:

Fetzer Vineyards,
Hopland, CA

2016 Pirque Terrunyo Block Las Terrazas Cabernet Sauvignon ($40, 94 points) Vines on the
river terrace in Pirque produce a silky, gentle cabernet in the hands of Lorena Mora; this is her first solo
vintage after training with Ignacio Recabarren. The
wine's cool, spicy flavors of red and black currants
play over a quiet riff of mineral tannins. It's cabernet
in a subtle Andean mode.
2017 Limarí Marqués de Casa Concha Coastal
Vineyard Pinot Noir ($25, 91 points) On the south
bank of the Limarí River, these vines are rooted in
limestone that's cascaded down from the Andes.
They grow a light red raspberry-scented pinot noir, a
wine crunchy and fresh enough to handle the grape
sweetness, with plenty of refreshing lime-like acidity.
For roast fish and fruity wild mushrooms.
WINE & SPIRITS

BUYING GUIDE 2020

Wine & Spirits - Winter 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Wine & Spirits - Winter 2019