Top Australian Wines To Keep

Penfolds Grange continues to be the most collected wine label in the country.

Wine Ark One, one of Australia’s leading cellaring companies analysed over 3 million bottles that has been stored by members in compiling their ranking of the top 50 Australian stored wines. The most popular wine of each variety was given an award.

Traditional wine flavours such as butter or pepper may actually have more scientific metric rather than mere snobbery.

While the No.1 brand was not of particular surprise to many, smaller wineries including Torbreck in the Barossa Valley and Cullen from the Margaret River suprisingly gave the larger brands a run for their money.

Jeremy Oliver, who wirites the ever popular annual wine guide, said this shows the of the increasing maturity of Australian wine drinkers. He was particularly interested by Lake’s Folly, a very small Hunter Valley producer which scored was awarded the most popular cabernet, which is one of the largest wine varieties produced in the country.

Other category winners included Mount Mary Pinot Noir, Leeuwin Estate Art Series Chardonnay, Grosset Polish Hill reisling and Tyrell’s Vat 1 semillon.

He said “There was a good mix of winners between the big companies like Foster’s, to small to medium sized and tiny,” And further stated. “I think that’s a surprise, I thought that all the category winners would be from the bigger ones. It shows how mature the market is.”

Oliver said the range of prices from the top 50 brands surprised him, ranging from $15 to $25 for the Seppelt Chalambar Shiraz (in 32nd place) to the over $500+ of Penfolds Grange.

“Wynns Black Label Coonawarra (cabernet sauvignon) you would expect to see quite high in that list, and it was (in sixth place), and it is quite an cheap wine and you could argue quite underpriced,” he said.

“This list flies in the face of what a number of marketers think and price has been a big surprise. What people choose to store isn’t a major factor.”

Dean Taylor, Wine Ark chief executive stated that his 8,000 members ranged from serious collectors with wine collections of $1 million plus worth of wine stored to families cellaring the a single bottle of Grange upon their child’s birth..

While many continue to store Penfolds Grange (since its the 2006 survey), it was the 2nd most popular wine this year, second only to Penfolds Bin 389 Cabernet Shiraz blend.

He said “Because the Grange is so expensive a lot of people buy it and don’t drink it”. I think that’s one of the reasons why it is the most popular because people have it in their cellar but haven’t found the opportunity to drink it.”

Oliver was surprised by this result given the numerous number of excellent shirazes available at a lower price..

“Grange costs a lot of money to put away” Oliver says. Customers are are confident about the large amounts of money they’re investing in wine as it is the particular wine they want to store. I thought maybe a Penfolds Bin 28, which you can get for a fraction of the price, would be more popular than Grange.”

Eight white wines appeared in the top 50 including Leeuwin Estate Art Series Chardonnay, Grosset Polish Hill, Petaluma Hanlin Hill Riesling, Tyrell’s Wines Vat 1 Hunter Semillon, Grosset Springvale Watervale Riesling, De Bortoli Noble One Botrytis Semillon and the Giaconda Chardonnay..

Other facts: South Australia accounted for 60 per cent of wines making the list. Shiraz was the most collected wine, with 46 per cent. The most popular producer with eight of the top 50 wines was Penfolds. The most improved was Yarra Yering’s Dry Red No 1, up 64 places.

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