Penfolds Icon & Luxury Release – May 2014

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Penfolds launches $1800 Bin 170 Kalimna Shiraz

‘For me, this is the finest young [red] I have ever tasted.  It is phenomenal in every way.  I cannot imagine how it could be bettered …  The clarity of message from start to finish is arresting … wistful spice and heavenly floral notes … majestic drive and intensity of fruit.  The tannins are awesome … Dense damson and blueberry notes cavort – the whole experience is almost transcendental. Epic and thrilling I couldn’t spit it out.  I couldn’t whiplash it out of my mouth even if I was crashed into at speed while waiting for a red light to change.  Weirdly it wasn’t swallowed either – it was subsumed into my soul.  20++ (100++).’

Matthew Jukes, writing about Penfolds St Henri 2010.

$80 St Henri steals the show

I wanted to start this post with a bang, and Matthew Jukes was kind enough to provide the superlatives, the explosives, the car crash and the transcendental experience. The real story is that good old St Henri has stolen the show. It gets raves and 100 points from most everyone, while the super special Bin 170 has to make do with 97 and 98 (even the ever-generous James Halliday won’t budge beyond that).

The annual Penfolds release of its top wines comprises 2 levels, Premiums and Icons. The Premiums were released on March 6, and the Icon & Luxury wines on May 1.We wrote about the Premiums here Penfolds Bin Reds Release 2014 – Quality Down, Prices Up, so now we can get stuck into the upper crust of the Penfolds pie. The Icons start at about $100 RRP:

• Reserve Bin A Chardonnay 2010 – $100
• Yattarna 2011 – $150
• St Henri 2010 – $95
• Magill Estate Shiraz 2011 – $130
• RWT Shiraz 2011 – $175
• Grange 2009 – $785

There was no Bin 707 or Bin 169 made in 2011

After pushing the prices for these wines up hard in the last few years, TWE has decided to leave them alone this year. That decision may reflect the difficult 2011 vintage, or it may signal that TWE has worked out that it can only push prices so far before buyers turn their backs on these icons in droves.  As we showed in Penfolds Grange – rich wine, poor investment, TWE has pushed the price of Grange so high that investors will never get their money back.

What could be more special than Grange?

To make up for the shortfall in additional profit this year, Penfolds has released a very special bin at the very special price of $1800: Bin 170 Kalimna Vineyard Block 3C Barossa Valley Shiraz 2010.The bin number is a reflection of Penfolds’ 170th birthday. We can only wonder if TWE will ever give Max Schubert credit for saving a company that was in dire straights.

Penfolds tends to release these special bins at a higher price than Grange, a serious marketing mistake that can only diminish the prestige of the brand’s biggest icon. Anyone with the faintest idea of marketing will tell you that you don’t de-throne an icon like Grange that has taken 50 years to perfect, unless you’re willing to devalue it.

Huon Hooke doesn’t see a problem with this in this Sydney Morning  Herald piece, writing that ‘Grange is no longer the greatest Penfolds wine, and hasn’t been for some years. It’s the sporadic ”Special Bin” red wines that lead the way today … the Special Bin reds are a cut above.’ He adds that ‘several Special Bin reds have been released this century at prices above Grange.’

The special bins HH talks about were the 2004 Block 42 Cabernet Sauvignon and the 2004 Bin 60A Cabernet Shiraz, both priced at $580 a few years back. They were a little dearer than Grange at the time. 3 years ago, Penfolds released the 2008 Bin 620 Cabernet Shiraz with a record price tag of $1000; now the company expects punters to cough up almost twice as much for this year’s special bin. Who are these punters? Chinese aspirants?

Worth $1800?

We wouldn’t invest in these special bins, and here’s why: you can buy the fabulous ‘cut above’ 2004 Bin 60A Cabernet Shiraz for $700 retail at Winestar, for $600 on eBay, and for less than $500 at auction. That’s despite the tiny quantity made: just 1,000 cases. Once again it turns out that Penfolds – or its greedy master TWE – has screwed the prices too high for the auction market to sustain.

The Bin 170 Kalimna Block 3C Shiraz 2010 is another low volume special: just 500 dozen of this wine have been made, and it says so on the special neck label. HH writes that this ‘places the wine squarely in the territory occupied by elite small chateau and first-growth Bordeaux, and leading domaine grand cru Burgundy. This is undoubtedly where Penfolds today sees its place in the global wine realm, and I would not argue with them.’

Huon might not but I would. TWE keeps doing stupid things and will eventually pay the price. As I wrote in Penfolds Bin Reds Release 2014 – Quality Down, Prices Up, TWE’s goal is optimising profits not wine quality, and the management team seems hell-bent on sacrificing the mighty brand at the altar of greed.

We’ll let Matthew Jukes have the last word on the Bin 170. He says: ‘If it didn’t feel so studied I would like it more.  As it is this is a very, very expensive bottle of inky black Shiraz with a special label.  It is impressive and provocative but it doesn’t move me like it should.  19++ (95 ++).’

Much smarter wines to buy with $1800 dollars

As we said at the beginning, St Henri 2010 is the star of this show, and comes with an almost modest price tag of $95. On May 1, it’s already being offered at $78 by Winelistaustralia while the Bin 170 is being offered at $300 off already.

That aside, if we had $1800 to spend on great wine but had to stay close to our self-imposed maximum of $25 a bottle, this is what we’d spend that kind of money on:

Happy drinking

Kim

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