Penfolds Penfolds Grange 2019 750ml

This is an epic wine that doesn’t quit, opening up with ripe, fleshy flavors of black cherry, maraschino cherry and framboise. But the fruit notes are only the beginning, giving way to date-nut bread, salted bittersweet chocolate, marzipan, dried olive, green peppercorn, French-press coffee and cardamom. The tannins are filling in the mouth, but never get in the way of all the complexity, while the finish just goes on and on. Drink now through 2047. 500 cases imported.

This is an epic wine that doesn’t quit, opening up with ripe, fleshy flavors of black cherry, maraschino cherry and framboise. But the fruit notes are only the beginning, giving way to date-nut bread, salted bittersweet chocolate, marzipan, dried olive, green peppercorn, French-press coffee and cardamom. The tannins are filling in the mouth, but never get in the way of all the complexity, while the finish just goes on and on. Drink now through 2047.

Arguably Australia's most famous wine, the 2019 vintage of Grange, a multi-regional blend from top vineyards around South Australia, is a dense yet aromatic bottling that unpeels over time in a glass or decanter. Raspberry and blackberry compote, cedar, licorice and winter warming spice are on deck, with seaweed-like umami nuances and a good lick of mocha-like oak. The palate is plush and plump like a favorite armchair, but framed in powerful, beautifully integrated tannins, with enough stuffing to last the ages. It should cellar beautifully until 2050, at least.

Dark, dank and immaculate. The oak handling and tannic precision boast ample class. Beneath lurks a latent, molten beauty that will unravel eventually. I like this Grange. I feel that the decadent style, molten and fleshy, is well suited to the drought vintage and its thick grape skin tannic scour. Mercifully, the tannins are pliant and despite it all, plenty juicy. Firework aromas of raspberry liqueur, camphor and gunpowder, with a smear of black olive, licorella and hung meat wafting across the long finish. Best from 2030.

The bold, expansive 2019 Grange (97% Shiraz, 3% Cabernet Sauvignon) spent 19 months in larger new American Oak and is powerful and expressive as it delivers a dense core of coca, blackberry and baked terracotta aromas, all well backed by toasted coconut oak. Mouth-filing, expansive and seriously tannic, it then delivers waves of dark berry flavor laced with touches of spice, leading to a rich, muscular finish. It's built for the long haul, so don't even think of opening for at least a decade.<br/><br/>