Penfolds Grange Shiraz 1983
Made using a blend of 94 percent shiraz and 6 percent cabernet sauvignon.
Grapes for the 1983 Grange were grown in the Barossa Valley (Kalimna Vineyard and others), Magill Estate (Adelaide), and the Modbury Vineyard (Adelaide).
1983 was a hot, tragic vintage (marked by the Ash Wednesday bushfires) though it was also marked by heavy rain (and floods) around harvest time.
Many aspects of 1983 were a winegrower's worst nightmare. And yet out of the mayhem and indeed the human tragedy a monumental 1983 Penfolds Grange was produced.
1983 Grange is a heavy-hitting release.
1983 Grange is regularly included in lists of “Great Grange Releases”.
1983 Grange has always been one of the biggest and burliest of Penfolds Grange relesses. It’s often regarded as a great release, though perhaps a little less so now than it once was. I didn’t taste it on release but I’ve seen it on two occasions since, once at a Penfolds Rewards of Patience tasting and again in 2018. It offers deep, brooding, timeless scents with a whopping slink of malt, licorice and blackberry. In late 2003 – when this wine was 20 years old – this release still tasted very youthful, though it was just starting to come around. It then offered rich licorice flavours, drying tannin, a cigar-box savouriness and oodles of concentrated, muscular power, both tannin and fruit. It also had mint-doused leather characters, sexily interwoven. I called it at this 2003 tasting “a rugged champion of a wine”. When I tasted it again in 2018 it was more seriously advanced. It still though seemed muscular, and sizeable, and tannic, and imposing. Charm has never really entered this wine’s building but for sheer flex 1983 Grange can still impress. 93-94 points.
