Thistledown’s This Charming Man Old Vine Grenache 2024 is one of the wines of the year

Written By Campbell Mattinson
Mattinson review of Thistledown This Charming Man Old Vine Grenache 2024.

Thistledown This Charming Man Old Vine Grenache 2024
$95, 13.5% alcohol, screwcap, McLaren Vale.

Thistledown’s This Charming Man Grenache 2024 is one of the best Australian red wines of 2025.

Grown on the Smart vineyard at Clarendon in McLaren Vale. The finesse of this wine, the inherent balance, the array, the interest. And the length. This is a superb wine. Light but insistent, powerful where it needs to be, awash with spice and cherried fruit, and so gorgeously long, sinewy and fine through the finish, the mark of excellence. This is a grenache for the true believers. You don’t just drink this, you come home to it. 96 points.

I have no problem in marking this as one of the best Australian red wines of 2025.

Campbell Mattinson

This article was written by Campbell Mattinson, founder of The Winefront and mattinson, and former chief editor of Halliday.

When you pick up a wine book and see thousands of top-scoring wines, it’s hard to know which wine to choose. Mattinson guides you through this maze, giving you an honest view of the best Australian wines, the best wine stories, the best wine producers, the best value wines and simply, the best tasting wines. Importantly, Mattinson will tell you about the top-rated wines and also about the underrated wines. In short, Mattinson knows Australian wines inside and out.

Mattinson has been a photo-journalist since 1987. For the past 25 years he’s been a voice that you can trust when you’re looking for the best wines. 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, and is the author of the award-winning book The Wine Hunter. He’s not afraid to put a score beside a wine. But what he’d rather do, is tell you the wine’s story.

https://www.campbellmattinson.com
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