Penfolds Grange Shiraz 1983
Penfolds Grange Shiraz 1983
13.3% alcohol, cork, South Australia.
If you want to read my original review and my updated note from a tasting in 2018, skip over the talking points and the background and head straight on to the review.
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 has always been known as a heavy-hitting release.
1983 Grange is regularly included in lists of “Great Grange Releases”.
This specific Penfolds Grange 1983 is made using a blend of 94 percent shiraz and 6 percent cabernet sauvignon.
1983 Penfolds Grange was made by winemaker Don Ditter. Ditter was the Penfolds chief winemaker between 1976 and 1986.
Grapes for the 1983 Grange were grown in the Barossa Valley (Kalimna Vineyard and others), Magill Estate (Adelaide), and the Modbury Vineyard (Adelaide).
Mattinson has tasted Penfolds Grange 1983 on two occasions, the most recent in 2018.
General Grange Background: Penfolds Grange Shiraz is listed as a Heritage Icon of South Australia. It has an unbroken lineage back to 1951. It’s routinely released as a four-year-old, and routinely matured in 100% American oak hogsheads for 18 months. The first commercial release of Penfolds Grange Hermitage, the 1952 vintage, was similarly matured for 18 months in new American oak. Penfolds Bin 95 Grange was named Grange Hermitage from 1952 through to 1989 inclusive. It’s been labelled as Penfolds Grange Bin 95 (sans Hermitage) from the 1990 vintage onwards. It’s commonly called, simply, Grange.
Review: PENFOLDS GRANGE1983
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 in 2007 and again in 2018. It offers deep, brooding, timeless scents with a whopping slink of malt, licorice and blackberry. In 2007 – when this wine was 24 years old – this release still tasted 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 2007 tasting “a rugged champion of a wine”.
When I tasted Penfolds Grange 1983 again in 2018 it was more seriously advanced. It still though seemed muscular, sizeable, tannic, and imposing. Charm has never really entered this wine’s building but for sheer flex 1983 Grange can still impress, often mightily. 2003-2023+
94 points.
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All reviews of Penfolds Grange on this site are available via the Penfolds Grange tag.
See also [Penfolds Grange 1952–2022 Full Reviews on The Winefront]
