Penfolds Block 42 Kalimna Cabernet Sauvignon 1996 Review: 20 Years Later

The wine: Penfolds Block 42 Kalimna Cabernet Sauvignon 1996
Alcohol: 13%
The vineyard: Kalimna Block 42 — among the oldest living Cabernet Sauvignon vines in the world, and the same patch credited with producing Max Schubert's experimental Grange Cabernet(s).
Tasted twice: First reviewed in 2007, aged 11; retasted in 2025, aged 29 — roughly 18 years apart.

—

It’s been eighteen years between drinks – for me – of Penfolds Block 42 Kalimna Cabernet Sauvignon 1996.

—

In late 2007 I sat down to a glass of Penfolds Block 42 Kalimna Cabernet Sauvignon 1996 for review on The Winefront. With wines like this – which are both rare and expensive – opportunities to taste them are often a ‘one moment only’ situation, in that the wine will head off into the cellars of collectors around the world, never again to be seen by wine reviewers such as myself. When I tasted this wine in 2007 it was eleven years old already, which was a pretty good time to assess it. Before I describe how the wine tasted though, the vineyard itself is worth a note. Penfolds’ Block 42 of Cabernet Sauvignon, which grows at Kalimna in the Barossa Valley, is one of the oldest blocks of cabernet vines in the world. It was planted in 1888. This vineyard is famous for its age, for the quality of the grapes that it grows, and for the fact that when Max Schubert (the creator of Penfolds Grange) was still bedding down the Grange methodology, he made two “experimental” wines with Cabernet Sauvignon grapes. Both of these experiemental Grange Cabernets, made in 1952 and 1953, were grown exclusively on Penfolds Block 42 at Kalimna. The first commercial release of Grange – the 1953 – was of course made predominantly with Shiraz, as every release has been thereafter.

So the vineyard known as Block 42 Cabernet Sauvignon doesn’t just grow great grapes; it has the richest history imaginable, and is Australian wine royalty.

The special bin or just plain special release wines of Penfolds have a long-established history of cellaring, often magnificently, for decades. Indeed they have a long-standing history of sheer wine brilliance. But then there’s also the old adage of Australian wine cellaring: seven out of ten wines are at their drinking best between seven and ten years, or thereabouts.

My full review Penfolds Block 42 Kalimna Cabernet Sauvignon 1996, from 2007, is on The Winefront, but my conclusion back then was: “Its delicacy really surprised me. This is fast heading into ethereal territory, and can be drunk from now – and will enter its long peak from about five years on. It makes complexity look easy. It’s a treasure.”

I noted too in that review that this Penfolds Block 42 Kalimna Cabernet Sauvignon 1996 is a single block wine, made with a single variety, from a single region. Penfolds is a commander of many different things and part of what it does is street cred, single origin, old-est vine wines as well as anyone in the world.

Yesterday (mid-2025), as luck would have it, I sat down to a glass of Penfolds Block 42 Kalimna Cabernet Sauvignon 1996 again, with lunch. It’s not quite twenty years between drinks of this wine but it’s very close to. I was just typing notes on it into my phone, as I tucked into my Wagyu, but what I wrote was: “Clear saltbush notes. Mahogany, leather, redcurrants, salted olives and mocha, with whispers of resin, or perhaps the latter is just the flavour of redcurrant, leather and cream combined. The tannin is still both firm and ultra-fine, the texture is still luxurious, and both the acidity and fruit are still pulsing and pushing long. This is now a fully mature Penfolds wine with ample meat, texture and length.” My initial review on The Winefront had a drinking window out to 2035. Would this wine go another ten years?

What I didn’t write in my note, but took home in my mind, was how at-ease this wine is in its world. It’s still in full health. Another ten, another twenty years; stored well, cork permitting, I can’t see why not. This was never a huge wine but it’s nearly 30 years old and there’s still a substance and a wit to the story it tells. Nothing seduces quite like fruit and oak. But finesse endures, and this wine was always a wise investment in exactly that.

96 points – Campbell Mattinson.

—
Campbell Mattinson is the founder of The Winefront business and is the former chief editor of Halliday Wine Companion. He’s published five books on wine, four of them bestsellers. He’s the only person to have won the Australian Wine Communicator of the Year Award more than once.