Nina Caplan

‘Even if not sent there at Her Majesty’s pleasure, 19th century Australia would have driven a man to drink’

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AUSTRALIA’S WHITE SETTLERS barely drew breath before planting vines: even if they hadn’t been sent there at her Majesty’s pleasure, 19th-century Terra Australis, hot and harsh, would have driven a man to drink.

South Australia was founded in 1836 on principles of free immigration, free trade and religious freedom, but the idealism was rickety: the British government declaring the land ‘waste and unoccupied’ was news, surely, to the Aboriginal people who had productively occupied it for 30,000 years.

The state’s relationship with Europe was complex. its capital, Adelaide, was named for England’s Queen; a century later, Penfolds called its top wine Grange hermitage, after the northern Rhône’s most famous appellation. Grange (just Grange, now) is still mainly shiraz, but the grapes come from a range of vineyards, blended according to whim and weather.

‘No two Granges are the same, but the style is distinct,’ says Penfolds chief winemaker Peter Gago. ‘it’s always 100% new American oak, always off skins quite early, so you can taste the relationship between 1953 and 2010.’