Penfolds St Henri Shiraz 2003 Monday, May 7 2007
Tasting Notes and Australia and Barossa Valley and McLaren Vale and Clare Valley and Langhorne Ck and Variety and Red and shiraz et al
I love St Henri; in a good year I will buy a six-pack, in a great year I will buy a dozen, plus a few magnums. So I approached this bottle with some high expectations, despite the vintage.
This showed a pleasantly lifted and forward nose; raspberry, mocha, nutmeg, some raisined fruit and a bit of black fruits and char. The palate was quite delicious, with raspberries, cinnamon, nutmeg, black cherries and raisins (again), and a bit of char; or is this more like a burnt fruit character? It certainly shows some ripe fruits, and the alcohol pokes out at times, but these are ably balanced by some rapspberry acid. A very good wine, but the baked/raisiny character just doesn’t sit quite right with me. Drink over the medium term.
Rated : 89 Points
Tasted : May07
Alcohol : 14.5%
Price : $80
Drink : 2010 - 2015
Source : The Wine Emporium
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34 Responses to “Penfolds St Henri Shiraz 2003”
May 7th, 2007 at 6:30 pm
I have it on good advice that one of the more recent vintages of St Henri was excess Grange. Just wondering if anyone has noticed?
May 7th, 2007 at 6:35 pm
hmmm…grange sells out every year. I wonder why they wouldn’t just bottle it as grange?
May 7th, 2007 at 6:38 pm
Apparently they did not want to oversupply the market. They have set quotas.
May 7th, 2007 at 6:45 pm
I think if they had enough Grange quality wine they would put a Grange label on it. I would..
GW
May 7th, 2007 at 6:54 pm
Well, you obviously dont know what they do at Penfolds. And just because ‘you’ would do it is not really a credible comment Obi one Canoby.
May 7th, 2007 at 7:00 pm
Beware the chinese whispers of the wine industry…this is the same principle that cleanskins work on…the suggestion of an incredible bargain when the provenance is generally unprovable (which of course is neither confirmed or denied) and which drifts in the ether tempting the unwary.
GD
May 7th, 2007 at 7:04 pm
save your ether for distillation Plato. Cynicism is but fear of the unknown flocculating down from what lies above liquefied.
May 7th, 2007 at 7:10 pm
The St Henri style tastes totally different to Grange so I highly doubt its left over Grange.
You have it on good advice from someone? So is this how you get to know what they do at Penfolds or do you actually know something first hand?
May 7th, 2007 at 7:16 pm
Ah…i am glad you asked. Someone who at least wants to know not tell….
May 7th, 2007 at 7:17 pm
thanks for waiting. Lets just say I have it straight from the source.
May 7th, 2007 at 8:54 pm
Vangelis - you either need a better source or need to listen more closely, there is no way any St Henri was or will ever be the same wine as Grange. Or do you just mean some of the grapes sometimes destined for Grange didn’t quite make the grade one year and went into St Henri (made to a quite different regime to Grange)? If you believe half the stories around of people making wines from grapes from a vineyard that (once) went into Grange then you would wonder how Penfolds make a Grange at all these days.
May 7th, 2007 at 8:59 pm
Quite different styles I would think. I am sure some Grange fruit might go into St Henri but not lots of new American oak matured shiraz (maybe at most a tiny quantity). That, I think, is nonsense. The only comment I can offer is that I did notice an increase in oak aromatics on the 2002 vintage.
GW
May 7th, 2007 at 9:15 pm
Ha. Great minds think alike…we said exactly the same thing independently.
GW
May 8th, 2007 at 9:14 am
“The only comment I can offer is that I did notice an increase in oak aromatics on the 2002 vintage.”
I guess it’s possible that a few lesser barrels originally intended for Grange may make it into the St Henri or even 389 as they do periodic barrel tastings, but it would have to be fairly early in the cycle due to the differences in the barrel maturation and bottling cycles for the other wines.
A higher proportion of McLarenVale shiraz can sometimes give a bit of a mocha lift to the aromatics. According to the Penfolds site the 2002 was all McLarenVale and Barossa, not the wider multi-region fruit salad of many other vintages.
May 8th, 2007 at 9:22 am
just to add to the mix…I was told by a Penfolds winemaker (who’s family has long penfolds association) that the shiraz component of the 1976 Koonunga Hill was made from fruit destined for St. Henri
May 8th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
A lot of fruit goes into the Grange programme, or is watched for it - in Penfolds high quality red intake, called Top Shelf. There are various gradings, style options, tastings to see what Penfolds product the fruit ends up in. Some years Grange consists of vineyard XYZ, other years ABC depending on how, Magill, Barossa and in some years McLaren Vale fare.
May 8th, 2007 at 2:27 pm
So is Magill on the Adelaide Plains?
May 8th, 2007 at 3:28 pm
St Henri is fermented in stainless steel and matured in 1460 litre old oak foudres - it doesn’t see any barriques at all to my knowledge.
Thus St Henri would never contain any de-classified Grange wine.
As RB and GW both say, the only possible connection may be either vineyard source or parcels of fruit that may some years go in to the (other) respective wines.
May 8th, 2007 at 3:30 pm
Magill is a suburb of Adelaide - literally. It is surrounded by houses. Apart from the original Rawson’s homestead, Penfolds maintain winemaking facilities, barrel ageing (including for Grange) and offices. And there’s a lovely swanky restaurant too.
Modbury used to supply fruit to Grange before it was turned in to housing around 1980.
May 11th, 2007 at 3:56 am
GW,
Re: the cleanskin comment. Appreciate the truth of much of it, but there are some good guys out there selling these - worked for one for three years and had the pleasure of getting to look at winery samples prior to purchasing decisions. There can be some veeery good stuff with a cleanskin label on it.
May 11th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
darryl…
you had visibility of winemaker/producer/fruit etc?
A casual buyer is just hoping for the bargain buy of the century
with a cleanskin. I’m not saying that there aren’t some quality products out there…See the discussion regarding Kemeny’s ‘cleanskins’
http://www.winorama.com.au/tasting-notes/kemenys-hidden-label-barossa-valley-grenache-mourvedre-shiraz-2004/
…and as Jules says in that posting, cleanskins will be drying up fairly soon.
May 11th, 2007 at 12:49 pm
Regan,
yes, as one of the staff, I had the chance to see some of the samples coming in from the wineries, sometimes labelled, others with winemakers “handwritten” labels detailing vineyard (if they had more than one), the “Brand” they sold a wine under eg: Penfolds St Henri (safe to use that example as we never had it) etc. The alternate was the occasional slip by the boss on source or a visit by the winemaker concerned. Also didn’t help when, at times, the winery shipped to the store in standard packaging with their labelled boxes, embossed corks etc.
, shooting themselves in the foot as far as concealing the product. Big bonus for the staff, though also sworn to secrecy on sources etc, as there were significant legal issues - generally tied up in a confidentiality agreement to protect the brand on standard retail shelves. Suffice to say, some fabulous bargains were available once some knowledge of the wine was there. I still buy a lot of stuff from these guys, though no longer in the same location, having it shipped. Several of the wines I was able to get have been reviewed on these pages at one time or another, generally with quite good results.
May 11th, 2007 at 1:08 pm
Wanna share the love on which wines, where from and how much then?
and i’ve seen cleanskins with winery corks and capsules, too. giving a very fair indication of what’s inside!
May 11th, 2007 at 8:45 pm
Regan,
Got an e-mail address at your business?? Cant get to your website from my work system - apparently shouldn’t be spending work time etc purchasing booze.
May 14th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
Fruit from here, fruit from there, St Henri or not. Whatever. I’ve tasted the 2002 Grange and at 500 bucks they are joking. An amalgam of vineyards. One big bluff. Torbreck Run Rig, now that’s class and at 2 for the price of 1 big bluff I know what I’d rather. And agree whole heartedly with the 89 points. Phew! And I thought it was only me.
May 14th, 2007 at 4:21 pm
Regan,
sorry it took so long to get back to you. Network problems all weekend. The website for the guy I deal with is www.6jswinemerchants.com.au. The wines to look for at present are:
“Crossroads” Yarra Valley Premium 2005 Shiraz/Viog, Pinot, and Chard (rated here (eg Winorama) at 94, 94/93 (two reviews) and 93 respectively and RRPs of approx $28. Also “Guvvos Reef” Margaret River premium Chard which has a rating here of 95 and RRP of approx $45. None of the wines via the cleanskin guy will cost more than $15/bottle, though there will be freight added for shipping if you are interstate (Tassie will be a bit pricey, but you should still get away at probably no more than 1.50/bottle, which would still see approx 40% saving on normal “labelled” price). Also worth a look on the site are the “Six Siblings” 2004 coonawarra reds - read the details and tell me you can’t figure out the source, the winery background is almost a direct quote from Hallidays Wine Guide.
He has had some very good products over the years from some very good producers of considerable repute, thanks to some excellent contacts within the industry. I will acknowledge that some of the wines are quite probably stuff not considered “good enough” for the winery labels, however many (like those listed above) are exactly the same wines as you would buy under label at Dans etc.
May 14th, 2007 at 5:14 pm
Thanks very muchly for that Darryl…
I’ve actually migrated north to Sydney now, but still hold tassie in my heart
May 14th, 2007 at 9:45 pm
No Probs. I understand how it is with you pointy heads
, my brother has been down there now for about 20 years, Launceston and Hobart.
You should have no probs dealing with Mark if you are so inclined. Good guy who will bend over backwards in the customer service stakes. Some of his stuff may seem pricey for cleanskin, but as stated, it is good stuff. If you want a carton of 3 dollar specials for a bbq he can do that too, but the aim is to go a little more upmarket and he is now using “House Labels” (hence the “Crossroads” and “Guvvos Reef” titles etc.) Just don’t go mentioning product by origin if you figure them out (shouldn’t be too hard) as he has those contractural agreements in place. Hence my references only to the house brands.
May 15th, 2007 at 12:30 am
I dunno, I’ve seen cleanskins advertised at higher prices than I can get good quality labelled wines. If the prices of the cleanskins you are promoting cost significantly less than the $12.95 Taylors cab 05 I’ve tried over the last couple of evenings, maybe I’d be tempted - but probably not.
When some labelled wines (excluding those that deserve cleanskin or cask classification) are good drinking, trying a plethora of swill to find a good wine is folly.
It seems you are promoting your mate’s cleanskins and didn’t even do that with any subtleyt.
May 15th, 2007 at 1:17 am
Daz,
re-reading my own comments, yes, can understand why you look at me “Promoting” the wines. Honestly, I just looked at a thread initially, made a comment than answered a question. I acknowledge your comments on the swill and also on some of the pricing. I certainly hand’t intended to offend or give the impression of still working for this guy. My only intent had been to “Share the love” as Regan put it - and requested, and to try and give direction as to source without actually saying as much. Apologies - unreserveredly - for any I have offended with the impression I have been out for a cheap chance to advertise for a bloke I know.
May 15th, 2007 at 2:23 am
You’ve not really offended me at all. I’d not even looked at the site link you provided. But there’s always a question mark over cleanskins a winery isn’t prepared to bottle and sell under it’s own label.
May 15th, 2007 at 7:42 am
More likely unable to sell………….
May 15th, 2007 at 3:53 pm
I feel a bit bad here, and I certainly wasn’t trying to solicit advertising!
I asked tongue in cheek initially and to gain a bit more of an understanding as to who is producing these cleanskins.
as to why, well, if you flood the market, do you de-value the product?
May 15th, 2007 at 7:26 pm
Regan,
understood and my intent really had been to try and answer the “who made it question” by referring to what was avail vs the notes here. I hadn’t intended to create the impression it appears I did. Maybe just needed to not elaborate so much but, oh well…stuff happens.
Anyway, see how much fun you can have figuring out what is what above by reference to notes on this site.