Penfolds chief winemaker Peter Gago not only carries on the research, experimentation and wine development that define the brand’s legacy, but also serves as the company’s public face.
The personable South Australian portrays himself as a custodian of Penfolds’s heritage, but he isn’t sitting back as he works to expand the brand’s appeal. The company has projects in California and China and is involved in groundbreaking collaborations with winemakers in Bordeaux, Champagne and the Rhône to stay relevant on the global scene.
Peter Gago, chief winemaker at Penfolds.Mark Anthony Wines & Spirits/Supplied
Not to be overlooked, Gago’s primary focus is safeguarding the pedigree of Australian-made Penfolds wines, which include legendary labels such as Grange and St. Henri and cutting-edge new products such as Superblend 802.A, a special cabernet and shiraz release from 2018. It is one of 15 wines included in a Nov. 13 online release at vintagesshoponline.com.
“Brands fall off the wayside,” Gago told me last week during a visit to Toronto. “My major job is maintaining credibility, maintaining this thing called wine and its integrity.”
Integrity might be a contentious choice of words considering how Gago’s winemaking teams often bend or abandon established winemaking codes and conventions.
Critics have questioned Gago’s embrace of unconventional blending practices, especially multivintage (G3, G4 and G5 offer consumers a chance to buy blends of three, four and five vintages of Grange in the same bottle) and multicountry wines (most recently, Grange La Chapelle, a 50/50 blend of top Australia shiraz with premium Rhône syrah from Domaine de La Chapelle). Collectors, nonetheless, have rushed to embrace these genre-busting bottles.
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Flying in the face of adversity comes with Penfolds’s top job. Max Schubert’s initial attempts at producing Grange in the 1950s were so poorly received by media that the company’s board instructed him to stop making the shiraz-based red wine. He stuck with the experiment, continuing to make “hidden Granges” in 1957, 1958 and 1959 until the Grange label was officially brought back in 1960 when Schubert was promoted from production manager to chief winemaker.
Speaking at the first Australian National University Wine Symposium in September, 1979, Schubert said Grange “is a truly controversial wine, never without interest, and always open to debate one way or another.”
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Schubert’s passion project has been listed as a heritage icon by the National Trust of South Australia since April, 2001, and has been celebrated as one of the world’s greatest wines since the 1990 vintage of Grange was named Wine Spectator’s Wine of the Year in 1995 – the first wine produced outside of California and France to receive that honour.
Schubert wasn’t the only pioneering force behind the scenes at Penfolds. Gago traces the company’s spirit of innovation back to winery founders Christopher and Mary Penfold, immigrants from the U.K. in 1844 who bought land in Magill, now a suburb of Adelaide. They planted European vine cuttings around the cottage (called the Grange) on the property and learned to farm through trial and error. After the death of her husband in 1870, Mary took over the winery and reportedly blended the wines produced to suit her taste.
Penfolds Magill Estate Cellar Door in Adelaide, Australia.Mark Anthony Wines & Spirits/Supplied
Penfolds makes a few “traditional” wines from a specific grape variety and place, such as Bin 169 Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon or RWT Barossa Valley Shiraz. Most of the portfolio represents blends of grape varieties and regions made to match what Gago calls “stylistic templates.” The shiraz grapes used to produce Grange or Bin 389, a cabernet shiraz blend often called Baby Grange, could come from the Barossa, Clare, Coonawarra, McLaren Vale or other locations in South Australia. The quality of the grapes is more important than the source. Only fruit with the right character is used to make wines, which conform to Penfolds’s established house style.
There’s synergy in a beautifully blended wine, according Gago. There’s also a story. To be successful, Penfolds’ wines need to deliver credibility, cellar-ability and collectability.
“A focus group has nothing to do with that. Marketing has nothing to do with that. It’s purely a winemaking thing,” he explains. “We evolve and refine our approach with a clear idea that this is where we want to go.”
On this day in downtown Toronto, after lunch, Gago has four more appointments, finishing with a winemakers’ dinner presented by LCBO Vintages at Harbour 60. Early the next morning, Penfolds’s roving ambassador will jump on a plane to the United States for meetings in Miami and elsewhere. Following a brief stop at home, he’s on to Zurich and Dubai. The festive season and the February start of the 2026 grape harvest in Australia will clip his wings.
During his coming travels, Gago says he needs to compile tasting notes for the next releases of Penfolds’s Champagne partnership with Champagne Thiénot and the 2022 vintage of Grange La Chapelle. He writes these reports based on his opinion and comments shared by the other winemakers. “These are real alliances,” he says. “I would really like to see these projects continue long term.”
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There are also final edits to be made to the ninth edition of Penfolds’s The Rewards of Patience, a cellar book based on comprehensive tastings to assess the taste profile and cellaring potential of Penfolds wines dating back to the earliest ones made by Schubert.
The Rewards of Patience books and company-run recorking clinics are part of the Penfolds’s after-market care for the prized bottles owned by connoisseurs and investors. Since 1991, Penfolds winemakers have offered complimentary check-ups on any of their red wines that are 15 years or older. If recorking is required, the bottle is opened, tasted, certified if in good condition, recorked and recapsuled. More than 250,000 bottles across four continents have been evaluated.
The biggest surprise for Gago has been how well the earliest Granges, from 1952 and 1953, continue to show against more recent releases. “Imagine the bottling technology at the time: a hammer with a cork, and they are still getting 100-point scores. Imagine if they had been bottled properly, what would they be like?”
The 2020 vintage of Grange is currently available in Ontario, Quebec and Alberta ($1,049.95 in Ontario), while British Columbia has inventory of the 2019 and 2018 vintages. Selection of other Penfolds labels from Australia or elsewhere varies by province.
