2013 Penfolds Grange

The 2013 Penfolds Grange is a blend of 96% Shiraz and 4% Cabernet Sauvignon with maturation taking place in new American oak hogsheads for 20 months. Amazing colour saturation, its core a totally impenetrable inky black with an equally deep dark red black hue. Alluring and powerful, heady scents of liquorice, dark chocolate, ripe blackberries and dark plum waft out the glass overlaid by vanillin oak, mocha, a faint whiff of boot leather and spice. Magnificently rich and concentrated, lush black fruit flavours including blackberries, liquorice, dark plums and dark chocolate run into a wall of rippling muscular tannins that imparts some firmness to the finish. Nuances of mocha, vanillin oak, earth and spice add further intrigue. Very long and persistent aftertaste of liquorice, ripe blackberries, dark plum, dark chocolate, earthy vanillin oak and spicy mocha. A powerful, brawny Grange that requires at least a decade of cellaring.
Cellar 10-20 years.
Alc. 14.5%

Other Reviews…
Remember that old Heinz Ketchup “anticipation” ad from the 1970s? The palate of this 2015 Grange does just that. It makes you wait with so much delicious promise being drip fed into the mouth at first—and then it bursts forth and delivers!
This vintage is a blend of 96% Shiraz and 4% Cabernet Sauvignon, coming from the Barossa Valley, McLaren Vale, Coonawarra and Magill Estate. Very deep inky purple-black colored, the 2013 Grange has a profoundly scented nose of crème de cassis, preserved black plums, blueberry pie and licorice over nuances of baker’s chocolate, smoky bacon and fragrant earth, plus exotic spice wafts of cumin seed, cardamom, fenugreek and star anise. Unfurling and slowly building in the medium to full-bodied mouth with wonderful grace and depth, it reveals an incredible array of ripe black fruit, spice, meat and earth-inspired flavors, with a rock-solid frame to support this beauty (it should easily cellar for 40+ years!), while previously latent flavors emerge fully on the epically long finish, culminating in that ultimate Grange experience. Oh, yes. Drink 2024-2057.
100 points
Lisa Perrotti-Brown – Robert Parker’s The Wine Advocate

96% shiraz, 4% cabernet sauvignon from the Barossa Valley, McLaren Vale, Coonawarra and Magill Estate, matured for 20 months in new American hogsheads. Gloriously, splendiferously complex. There are so many layers of flavour it's labyrinthine, yet you never lose the thread, the path, of the wine. Austerity is not a term often used with Grange, but it's here, and to the benefit of the wine. Drink by 2053.
99 points
James Halliday – Australian Wine Companion