Medium deep colour. Intense blackcurrant dark chocolate box cedar aromas with roasted chestnut, dukkha notes. Well-concentrated blackcurrant elderberry dark chocolate cedar flavours, fine grainy touch granular textures, underlying roasted chestnut/ vanilla oak notes, finishes chocolaty firm and long. Lovely balanced and supple-textured wine with superb fruit definition and elemental structure. Will need some years to unfold and hum. References Bin 707 and 407 and sits somewhere between in shape and volume. Distinctly Penfolds in style with Napa Valley’s hallmark tannin richness.
97 points (February 2021)
A beautiful,aromatic wine with blackcurrant, cool fruit and hints of minerals and tar. Full-bodied, yet polished and really well manicured. Long and creamy. Shows tension, energy and refinement. Drink after 2024, but so beautiful already. Hard not to drink.
95 points, JamesSuckling.com (February 2021)
Matured 16 months in 60/40% 1yo/new French oak barrels. In what Peter Gago describes in his inimitable fashion as 'the hemispherical inverse of Bin 407' this is a magnificently crafted Napa cabernet that offers allure from day one, yet great promise in years to come. Napa provenance is avowed confidently in a rich, ripe and succulent core of generous blackberry and blackcurrant fruit, even a hint of licorice. Fruit and high-class French oak tannins unite to wonderful effect in a refined and confident structure, meshing harmoniously with fruit and drawing out a very long finish.
95 points, Wine Companion (February 2021)
There’s authority here. It’s floral and generally seductive but it’s a powerhouse of flavour and tannin; it doesn’t just add to the record, it sets it straight. Roasted nuts, pure blackcurrant, blackberries dripping with juice, cocoa. It’s sheer, strong, substantial and soft at once. This is a wine that leaves no room for doubt. It’s gorgeous. It throws light, fragrant flowers into a gale force of ripe, fresh, succulent fruit. And then the surge of tannin rockets through; rugged; majestic; uncompromised. It’s big, sir. Cabernet is the coastline of wine. Bin 704 from 2018. Witness.
96 points, The Wine Front (February 2021)
Rich bouquet of mocha, the coffee and chocolate components readily identifiable; also some meatiness. It's full-bodied, very powerful, concentrated, with a lot of graphite notes. High extract, density and fleshiness, with abundant tannin grip. Very good length; a really serious wine. (88% Napa and 12% Sonoma cabernet, 16 months in French oak, 40% new, 60% one year old)
94 points, The Real Review (December 2020)
Penfolds
Penfolds is probably the most extraordinary of the world’s wine brands with an enviable reputation for quality at every price level. The original Penfold was an English doctor who, in 1844, planted grapes at Magill, now a suburb of Adelaide. However, it was not until the late 1940s that Penfolds began to forge a reputation for red wine.
The Penfolds house style emerged from a fortified wine producing culture and evolved as a winemaking philosophy which has had a profound effect on the entire Australian wine industry. Many of the techniques initially adopted to make Penfolds Grange would become part of the wider Penfolds winemaking culture. The number of techniques employed in the research and development of Penfolds wines is astonishing. Max Schubert and his team pioneered: major advances in yeast technology and paper chromatography; the understanding and use of pH in controlling bacterial spoilage; the use of headed down/submerged cap fermentation and the technique of rack and return; cold fermentation practices; the use of American oak as a maturation vessel and perhaps most critically, partial barrel fermentation. Nowadays, the use of American oak and barrel fermentation for instance is considered traditional Barossa winemaking practice!
Today, Penfolds house style embraces the concept of multi-regional blending, optimum fruit quality, the use of fine-grained American or French oak, barrel fermentation and maturation. Overall, the Penfolds style is about highly-defined fruit aromas, fruit sweetness, ripe tannins, richness, power and concentration. The number of iconic wines that have emerged from the Penfolds stable over the years is remarkable. Bin 389 a Cabernet Shiraz blend released in 1960 is now considered the quintessential Australian wine blend. Bin 128 Coonawarra Shiraz and Bin 28 Kalimna Shiraz released in 1962 pre-empted the contemporary enthusiasm for regional definition by about 25 years. Improved vineyard management, site selection and winemaking brought about subsequent releases of Bin 707 and Bin 407 Cabernet Sauvignon. The Penfolds Wine Making Philosophy is the accumulation of more than half-a-century of knowledge and winemaking practice initiated by Max Schubert and subsequently refined by Don Ditter, John Duval and Peter Gago. Their collective commitment to multi-regional and vineyard blending contributed to a consistency of style and quality that has cemented Penfolds reputation as the foremost producer of premium age-worthy red wines in Australia.
