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.

If the above wine sounds good, you really need to know about this wine too.

 
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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