Yalumba Tri-Centenary Grenache 2024
Yalumba Tri-Centenary Grenache 2024
AU$76, 14% alcohol, screwcap, Barossa Valley.
In December 2025 I reviewed this wine to The Winefront site and said, among other things, that this wine “is really something. It’s so pale, so perfumed, so riddled with spice, so sinewy and so damn beautiful. Talk about nailing the brief. This was a clear case of love at first sip.”
I then noted that it tastes of red licorice, orange peel, saltbush, rust, crushed fennel, strawberry and brine, and that it is fluid, beautiful, characterful and seductive at once.
I scored it, on The Winefront, at 94 points, though I didn’t note that its grown on bush vines that were planted in 1889, or that it was handpicked, or that it’s a single vineyard wine, or that (remarkably) there are only (to quote the Yalumba website) “820 gnarly old bush vines” growing on this site.
I should have. These are not uncommon details in Australian wine but familiarity breeds both contempt and disrespect. 820 vines, growing without trellising, that have survived since the 1880s, and are still setting and ripening the most delectable of fruit; it’s worth stopping and thinking about that.
It is especially so because the wine, as suggested above, is an absolute ripper. I obviously loved it back in December 2025 but now, in August 2026, it has blossomed and unfolded yet more. It’s so fine and perfumed and delicious, so well flavoured and so well finessed; it’s worth every cent and more.
It’s also worth, if it’s not obvious already, your best and biggest glassware.
95 points – Campbell Mattinson.
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[Yalumba is a Mattinson 10-Star Winery]
