How Penfolds is
Redefining the Wine World

(Wine Culture) Shauna Bastow is the youngest member of Penfolds’ global wine making team. Her winemaking journey began in 2013 when she enrolled in a Bachelor of Viticulture and Oenology at Adelaide University. In 2018, she completed her first vintage with Penfolds and officially joined the Penfolds’ winemaking family, which consists of three female and ten male wine makers. In her opening statement, she provided a brief history on Penfolds’ long winemaking tradition. Producing quality wines mainly in South Australia since 1844, the iconic winery has built an outstanding global reputation thanks to its powerful red wines. 

A key moment on this journey was Max Schubert taking over the role as chief wine maker in 1948 at the age of 33. He revolutionized the Australian wine world by introducing new techniques he brought back from an inspiring journey to Bordeaux. Penfolds was the first winery in Australia to choose French oak barrel aging and a blend of wines from different regions and vineyards. His curiosity and spirit of innovation gave the world the legendary Grange BIN 95, an award-winning fine wine which is undoubtedly one of the best Shiraz red wine blends in the world. Shauna’s explanation came as a surprise: “Less well known is the fact that the wine was initially not well received in the market, and the wine world owes it to the perseverance and patience of Max Schubert that Grange has been produced in every single vintage since 1951.” Schubert, not afraid to trial new techniques, made experimentation part of Penfolds’ DNA and the winery is today a master of blending wines from different regions and grape varieties. It’s a spirit that still dominates the winery today and is also a key reason for Shauna to pursue her career at Penfolds by taking on the challenge to move to France.

BECOMING A GLOBAL WINERY
Peter Gago, Penfolds’ Chief Winemaker since 2002, has taken the winery’s willingness to experiment to a new, global level. Creating wines with the Penfolds’ famous red stamp all around the world is the new goal. Champagne and Bordeaux since 2019, Napa Valley since 2021 and most recently China—these regions have been brought into the Penfolds’ sphere of production. “This is not just about running wineries in different regions of the world likes others do. We use a global toolbox of legitimate techniques wherever we believe it serves the goal to produce high quality wines recognizable as Penfolds by our customers.”

Shauna Bastow has been based in France since 2024 and is responsible for Penfolds’ French portfolio, including Champagne and red wines from the Bordeaux region. She explains how certain techniques are used cross culture. Penfolds’ Bordeaux red wines are partly matured in American oak— something that, to this day, has not been heard of from any other Bordeaux winery. “The American oak helps us to provide the wines with the Penfolds stamp.” Asking what exactly that is, Shauna talks about ripe and mature tannins, accessibility, balanced acidity, concentration and density. “Something which is easier to experience than to explain.” Noticeably she uses the term “generosity” multiple times, adding that they had to train the local team in Bordeaux to harvest the grapes later than common practice within the region.

The blending of varietals lies deep in the Penfolds’ DNA, with not only the combination of grape varieties or neighboring vineyards explored for new tastes. More extreme examples include blending Cabernet Sauvignon from Bordeaux and Coonawarra (South Australia) into a wine called Penfolds II. Like the very exclusive and recently launched Grange La Chapelle—a Syrah blend from Rhone’s famous vineyard Hermitage and Australia Grange—the wines are produced locally and then flown by plane in cooled tanks to Australia where the final blend is created. The question arises whether the intention to create something unique justifies the negative impact on the environment.

Overall, it remains impressive how Penfolds has created a global wine brand and manages to produce such a range of top wines not only in large quantities but also of the highest quality. But how does this fit into a time when the wine world celebrates terroir-driven wines, ideally from a single vineyard and a single grape variety? Is Penfolds’ rich tradition of experimentation and its quest to produce top quality wines reflecting the style and brand of the winery legitimate, or is it a betrayal of the ideal that wine has to reflect its terroir?

Tradition, while mostly valuable, can also be a burden which restricts innovation. For Penfolds—and to some extent Australia in general—it has always been more important to explore fresh paths rather than replicating traditional viticulture. Penfolds sees no reason to focus on terroir driven wines if they believe that their far greater strength is the art of blending. One may be skeptical of globally operating wine producers, but Shauna Bastow has convinced us that Penfolds has remained a winery at heart. There are obviously many different ways to combine nature and culture to create fantastic wines in countless varieties. We are well advised to accept that different people like to take different routes.

ABOUT THE TASTED WINES
We tasted 15 wines in Hamburg—all from the Penfolds Icon-Selection—from vintages between 1989 and 2023. The quality of the wines and their ability to mature can be considered excellent. The so-called Penfolds red stamp is recognizable and the younger vintages of the collection are already accessible and fun to drink. It is probably a coincidence that the only single-region, single-varietal wine—Penfolds BIN 169 Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon 2022—was the favorite in the tasting.