SC Pannell Sunrise 99 Grenache 2022

Written By Campbell Mattinson
Bottle of SC Pannell Sunrise 99 Grenache 2022.

SC Pannell Sunrise 99 Grenache 2022
AU$250, 14.5% alcohol, screwcap, McLaren Vale.

It’s not quite time for Grange to move over, but it is now true that many of the best red wines produced in Australia each year are made with grenache. This wine from SC Pannell is made from 99-year-old Grenache vines (at the time of vintage; they’re now 100+-years-old) growing in the Blewitt Springs sub-region of McLaren Vale. These vines are east-facing, which means that they face the sunrise.

Yowsers this is good. So firm, so long, so intense; it’s like staring into the eye of a tiger as it mauls you. Red berries, dry spices, stonefruits hanging, flowers flung. It’s a dry juicy ricochet of a wine. Fluff no more. This is grenache for the ages.

97 points – Campbell Mattinson.

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See also [Best Australian Grenache]
See also [S.C. Pannell is a Mattinson 10-Star Winery]
See also [S.C. Pannell Little Banch Grenache 2023]

Campbell Mattinson

This post was written by Campbell Mattinson. Mattinson is a former chief editor of the Halliday Wine Companion book, former editor of Halliday magazine, former editor of Australian Sommelier Magazine and founder of The Winefront business. He is the author of five books on wine – four of which were bestsellers (The Wine Hunter, the Big Red Wine Book 2008, the Big Red Wine Book 2009, and the Big Red Wine Book 2010).

Mattinson is also the founder of the Mattinson Photography business.

Campbell Mattinson has been an independent journalist, wine critic and photographer for forty years. He’s the only Australian to have won the Australian Wine Communicator of the Year Award more than once. He’s a past winner of a Louis Roederer International Wine Media Award; is the author of the award-winning book The Wine Hunter; and is the author of the best-selling novel We Were Not Men. He’s also a winner of a St Kilda Film Festival Award (as writer-director) and is a former winner of the national Best Australian Sports Writing Award. In 2026 three of his photographs were short-listed for the World Food Photography Awards.

Campbell Mattinson, who is 100% independent, has tasted between 5000 and 10,000 wines each and every year for the past 25 years. He tastes blind, in comparative brackets, as often as is practicable.

Campbell Mattinson is a journalist, a photographer, a filmmaker and a wine critic. In all of these mediums his prime motive is to tell people's stories.

https://www.campbellmattinson.com
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