The southern Rhône grape Grenache is currently all the rage in Australia, having been regarded as a lowly workhorse only a few years ago. However, few examples are as robust as a typical Châteauneuf-du-Pape, France’s most famous Grenache-based red. The majority of Australian producers of Grenache seem to be using Spain’s new wave of rather Burgundian versions of the grape, called Garnacha in Spain, as their model.
Australian Grenache is now more likely to be pale, aromatic, fruity and approachable rather than big, tough and bold, although there are exceptions — and I enjoyed many of them at a recent tasting of 45 Australian Grenaches in London.
As with fine Zinfandel in California, old bush vines are key to the charm of most of these wines, and Barossa Valley and McLaren Vale, respectively northeast and south of Adelaide in South Australia, are the hotspots. McLaren Vale Grenache was the first to become fashionable, even though Shiraz is far more widely planted there. As Jane Lopes and Jonathan Ross report in their 2023 book How to Drink Australian, fewer than 7 per cent of McLaren Vale vineyards are planted with Grenache — chiefly because 40 per cent of it disappeared thanks to the vine-pull scheme of the 1980s, when virtually the only buyers of Grenache grapes were Adelaide’s Italian families for their home-made wines.
An even higher proportion of Barossa Valley vineyards are devoted to Shiraz, but its Grenache has recently been making waves too. Barossa Valley is the location of what is possibly the world’s oldest Grenache vineyard, Cirillo’s, which was planted in the mid-19th century. Also in Barossa Valley, the South Australian family group Yalumba makes its Tri-Centenary Grenache from a block of bush vines planted in the Vine Vale district in 1889.
In McLaren Vale, thanks to the tenacity of the Smart family, some centenarian Grenache vines have somehow managed to survive. Their vineyard in the Clarendon district, planted in 1922, is now especially celebrated and fruit from it surfaced in the London tasting in wines from Willunga 100 and Ministry of Clouds. It’s a miracle that all these old vines have remained in the ground.
An important factor in the lightening up of Australian Grenache in both regions has been the switch in how it is aged. Previously, producers favoured the sort of small, new oak barriques used in Bordeaux and Burgundy, which can concentrate flavour. Now they are using either much older, larger casks or, increasingly, ageing the wine in concrete tanks, clay vessels or even ceramic egg-shaped containers.
While the “gentle Pinot Noir” style of Grenache is very charming, versatile and flattering to taste, I suspect many of these wines will have a relatively short life. I found more ambitious examples — still alluring but with a bit more structure and complexity — in such wines as Chapel Hill’s MV 2020, the MMAD 2022 from the sandy Blewitt Springs district, all the SC Pannell wines, the Willunga 100 examples, Thistledown’s Fool on the Hill 2002 from the Eden Valley above the Barossa valley floor, and all the wines from Yangarra, one of the earliest adopters of unconventional vessels for ageing.
Yangarra was founded in 2001 by Americans as a member of the international group Jackson Family Wines, long before Grenache was fully respected. (Lopes and Ross report that it was not until 2020 that grape prices for McLaren Vale Grenache overtook those of Shiraz.) It makes good use of a block of Grenache vines planted in 1946 with cuttings from the original Smart vineyard.
Other incomers to “the Vale” have been much more recent. MMAD, formed by the team behind Shaw + Smith of Adelaide Hills to the north, bought their old vines, some planted as long ago as 1939, in 2021. Robert Oatley Wines, with sizeable operations in both New South Wales and Western Australia, started to make an unoaked McLaren Vale Grenache in 2017 and in 2023 added the much more serious Finisterre Grenache based on fruit bought from an 80-year-old vineyard in Blewitt Springs.
Mark Bulman, who won the prestigious Jimmy Watson Trophy when at Turkey Flat in Barossa, has just launched Bulman Wines’ single-vineyard, old-vine Grenaches, one from Eden Valley and one from McLaren Vale aged in what he describes as sandstone amphorae, both more youthful than most and apparently made for the table rather than the wine bar.
In Barossa Valley, Alkina is an interesting newcomer. Argentine oil and gas billionaire Alejandro Bulgheroni owns a total of 14 wineries in Uruguay, Argentina, California and Tuscany, with Alberto Antonini as his roving winemaking consultant. He also hired peripatetic Chilean wine-specialist and soil-scientist Pedro Parra to divide the Barossa land he bought into small, homogenous parcels they call polygons. They planted more Grenache nine years ago but 80 per cent of the Estate Grenache 2024 that very much took my fancy was made from vines planted in the 1950s. Alkina pursues strictly regenerative farming techniques and local winemaker Amelia Nolan uses nothing but concrete for ageing the Grenache, even for her very finest wines.
Prices of Australian Grenache have risen across the board with its reclame. Alkina’s Polygon Grenache 2023 sells for A$295 a bottle domestically. On its website, Yangarra charges more than A$300 for the current, 2021 vintage of its top-of-the-range High Sands Grenache bottling from that 1946 block.
Probably the best-value Grenache in the London tasting, apart from the Tim Smith wine I recommend, was the Barossa Bush Vine Grenache 2022 in Yalumba’s “Samuel’s Collection” range, which is made from vines that are 60 to 105 years old. I tasted the 2021 vintage afterwards and can thoroughly recommend it at £17 from London End and no more than £20 from Frazier’s Wine Merchant and Australian Wines Online. The 2022 is expected to replace it in a month or two. To maximise freshness 10 per cent of the grapes were picked early and 10 per cent of the stems were retained in the fermentation vat. To maximise flavour, 30 per cent of the many different ingredients in this blend were macerated with the grape skins for nearly three months. This seems to be a successful recipe for combining the characters of both South Australia and the Grenache grape.
The tasting, like the Australian Grenache scene, may have been dominated by particularly sustainability conscious McLaren Vale, and Barossa Valley (where many of the vines had been organically and/or biodynamically grown too), but there were also examples from much cooler Frankland River in Western Australia and Clare Valley. Australian Grenache is enjoying its moment in the sun.
Unfortunately, Grenache needs quite a time on the vine to develop flavour and sufficiently ripe tannins, which means that low-alcohol Grenache is a rare beast indeed. Only Alkina, Bulman, Kalleske, Robert Oatley and Ochota Barrels managed to field a red under 14 per cent.
Tasting notes, scores and suggested drink dates on Purple Pages of JancisRobinson.com. International stockists on Wine-searcher.com
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