‘Marketing Genius or End-of-Empire Insanity?’

The company has released a one-off Penfolds Collection – a flight of Granges from 1951 through to 2007. The Collection goes on sale at Hedonism Wines in Mayfair, London, where you can also buy the Penfolds Ampoule released back in June 2012. One of the 12 ampoules is also for sale at Sydney airport, so it looks like they weren’t exactly snapped up by eager collectors. More on that ‘compelling work of wine art’ here: https://www.bestwinesunder20.com.au/penfolds-launches-168000-wine-gago-gone-gaga/

Each of the Grange bottles in the Christmas Collection comes signed by either Max Schubert, John Duval or Peter Gago (today’s custodian of the Holy Grail). The £1.2 million price also covers a set of 13 magnum cases that include the rare 2004 Bin 60A and the 2008 Bin 620 special bottlings. In addition, Penfolds will throw in one case of its icon and luxury wines every year for the next ten years.

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It’s about bigger profits, pure and simple.

Wynnsday has come and gone, and the news that John Riddoch Cabernet is now $130 RR seems to have passed everyone by. Treasury Wine Estates, the outfit Fosters hived off before it sold its beer business to the South Africans, has ended up with Australia’s most hallowed wine brands – from Penfolds and Lindemans to Wynns and Rouge Homme. The guys running TWE understand that brands are worth money and, in the last couple of years, they’ve decided to squeeze their brands for all they’re worth.

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Penalising loyal customers, milking a great brand

The wine merchant’s view

My wine posts are about the best wines you can get your hands on down under for 25 bucks or less. Full stop. To drink good wine, you don’t have to pay any more. To drink exceptional wine, you don’t have to pay much more either. That’s what I’m preaching.

When I wrote about the 2012 Penfolds Bin release, I missed this note in Decanter: “Jeff Poole, managing director of New Zealand’s Fine Wine Delivery Company, and a former employee of Penfolds, who said he has ‘championed’ its wines for more than 15 years, has criticised the brand this year after cost price increases of ‘up to 50%’. Poole said, ‘While it is the prerogative of any business to capitalise on increasing international demand and supply, we view this massive increase as a slap in the face’.

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Price includes senior Penfolds winemaker at opening ceremony

Penfolds has just released its 2004 Block 42 Kalimna Cabernet in a limited edition, hand-blown glass ampoule and a bespoke glass plumb-bob that suspends the ampoule within a wooden Jarrah cabinet. Only twelve ampoules will be made, individually numbered as you’d expect for such ‘a beautiful, thoughtful, unique objet d’art, designed to store wine in an ideal environment.’

‘The Penfolds Ampoule is not only a compelling work of wine art,’ the press release goes on, ‘it also provides a truly memorable experiential and sensory engagement. When a decision is made to open the ampoule a senior member of the Penfolds Winemaking team will personally attend a special opening ceremony for the owner (essentially your very own master-class).

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