Ten Things You Need to Know about The Penfolds Collection 2025
My Personal Top 5 Wines from the Penfolds Collection 2025 have already been listed, Penfolds Grange 2021 has been reviewed, and all the individual Penfolds 2025 wines analysed and scored to the (subscriber) Winefront site. But there’s always overview commentary around the annual release that doesn’t fit anywhere else. On the eve of the release of Penfolds Collection 2025 on August 7, here we go:
1. BABY FRENCH GRANGE
Given that Penfolds Bin 389 is the bedrock on which many Australian wine cellars have been formed, lovers of Australian red wine are well aware of both Penfolds’ prowess with the cabernet-shiraz blend, and its faith in this blend to create great, cellar-worthy red wine. The wine that jumps out of the Penfolds Collection 2025 then is FWT 543, made with cabernet and shiraz/syrah, and grown in Bordeaux and Languedoc regions of France. So Penfolds has started a journey to create a French Bin 389. The inaugural release is good but not great. Subsequent releases are likely to be better, as vineyard sources are refined. But the first wine of the Great French Cabernet Shiraz lineage has been made and (tomorrow) set loose.
2. MAGILL SHIRAZ
You’ll see a lot of high scores for the current 2023 release of Penfolds Magill Estate Shiraz, rightly or wrongly. What I’m more certain of is that Magill Estate Shiraz is not the wine that it should be. One day the kind of revolution that we’ve seen with McLaren Vale grenache, and that we’re now seeing with Barossa Valley shiraz courtesy of winemakers like Agricola Vintners, Eperosa, Sami-Odi, Alkina etc and others, will come to Magill Estate, and then it will really be a single vineyard wine from the home of Penfolds worth celebrating. Penfolds has a house style that must be continued, but the small-run, small-vineyard Magill Shiraz is an exciting opportunity staring everyone in the face, as yet unrealised.
3. PUT A CORK IN IT
At the Australian media event – at Magill Estate in Adelaide – held to showcase the Penfolds Collection 2025, chief winemaker Peter Gago was briefly herded into offering an opinion on screwcap-sealed wines or more accurately, where cork-sealed wines are currently placed in terms of world preferences. Australian wine consumers do, of course, on average – quite rightly – prefer and insist on screwcap. “Cork is coming back for fine, cellared, wines,” Gago said, not wanting to make a major deal of it. “With improvements in cork yes, it’s coming back. But each market is serviced accordingly.”
4. GRANGE LA CHAPELLE
Earlier in 2025, Penfolds Grange and La Chapelle from Hermitage released a 50/50 blend of the two wines from the 2021 vintage, called Grange La Chapelle 2021. At the 2025 media tasting it was confirmed that there is a follow-up 2022 release. This second release of Grange La Chapelle has been bottled and preparations for its release are well advanced. Grange La Chapelle 2022, matured in both American (Grange) and French (La Chapelle) oak will be released in 2026.
5. 2023 VINTAGE
Many of the wines from the Penfolds Collection 2025 are from the 2023 South Australian vintage. This was a cool, late vintage as a general rule, which has produced gently reductive, fractionally more restrained wines. The results of the 2023 South Australian vintage are nothing like the 2002 and 2011 vintages, where significantly leaner-and-cooler wines were often the norm. But 2023 certainly hasn’t produced blockbusters.
6. THE BURIED VINES
This won’t be news to those familiar with growing conditions in the Chinese province of Ningxia, and it’s certainly not the exclusive practice of Penfolds or of the growers it works with. But for the second year running Penfolds has released a wine under the CWT 521 bin label (Chinese Wine Trial). CWT is a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and the Marselan grape, the latter grown in Ningxia. Weather conditions in Ningxia in winter are so severe – often dropping well below -20°C – that, if left unprotected, grape vines would either be severely damaged, or wouldn’t survive the winter. To keep the vines alive and well-enough during winter then the vines are bent down and ‘buried’; in straw, soil or sometimes in plastic. If the CWT wine lives on to be an annual ongoing release to the point where the word Trial becomes redundant, perhaps it could be known at the Cold Winter Temperature wine.
7. THE WHITE GRANGE
When Penfolds Yattarna Chardonnay was first introduced – in 1998, with the 1995 vintage – it was nicknamed The White Grange. It’s occasionally still referred to with this moniker but it’s time to bring it back, in spirit at the very least. In pure wine quality terms Yattarna Chardonnay is good as “The Red Grange” pretty much every year, and that’s definitely the case with the latest release 2023. After nearly 30 years of releases, Yattarna has well and truly earnt its stripes. Yattarna is a great Australian wine, white or otherwise.
8. PENFOLDS PINOT?
I’ve mentioned this elsewhere but Penfolds Pinot Noir is never anything to write home about and yet here, with the latest 2024 release, suddenly it tastes varietal, fresh and more-ish. In the moments after I first tasted it you could have bowled me over with a screwcap. I scored it at 94/100 but really it’s probably more in the 93 or so area; I wanted to encourage it. It’s $55. It’s grown in Tasmania. It tastes like a good pinot. And it should mature OK too.
9. PRICES
Time to crunch some numbers. I made a point of looking at the RRP for each of the 22 Penfolds wines that I tasted this year, noting whether or not its asking price had changed. On 19 of the 22 wines tasted, there was no price change. That’s not unheard of but it’s also not usual. Indeed the only wines to have changed in price are Penfolds Magill Estate Shiraz, which has risen from $165 to $180, and Penfolds RWT Shiraz, which has risen from $200 to $220. Penfolds FWT 585 Cabernet Blend (from Bordeaux) has gradually moved down from $125 to $100 over the past four years.
Penfolds Grange has remained static at $1000 per bottle for the past four vintages, which is the longest no-change streak since the 2008-2011 four-vintage price streak (at $785).
10. PENFOLDS ST HENRI SHIRAZ
There’s a lot of talk, a lot of tasting, a lot of debate and a lot of words written. After all that, just buy St Henri. More often that not, it’s the one. And of the red wine releases of the 2025 Penfolds Collection, the 2022 Penfolds St Henri is again the one year.
The Winefront (subscriber) site has a great collection of St Henri reviews, going way back, and is your best source of St Henri information, arguably.
Go forth. Release date of Penfolds Collection 2025 is tomorrow (August 7).
