Behind the Red Curtain: Penfolds Special Bins from the Vault

BY ANGUS HUGHSON | MARCH 20, 2025

Penfolds is a venerable name in Australian wine and a national icon. It is the country’s equivalent of Château Lafite-Rothschild and Vega Sicilia. For admirers of the style, Penfolds Grange stands alongside the First Growth Bordeaux on which it was originally modelled. From the outside, Penfolds is not a winery that prides itself on innovation. The style of its key red wines is largely set in stone, with metronomic winemaking that reliably provides comfort to many fans. Yet when these wines first emerged, many were, in fact, revolutionary. Pioneering winemaker Max Schubert’s use of 100% new American oak and partial barrel-fermentation for early vintages of Grange was trailblazing, wholly rejected by Penfolds management and an array of leading experts at the time. Their initial reaction is best summed up by an unnamed taster: “Schubert, I congratulate you. A very good dry port, which no one in their right mind will buy, let alone drink.” This dynamism and tension is not necessarily a bad thing in any business, helping to break down barriers with an eye toward potentially exciting results in the future, but it can certainly present a difficult path for winemakers to navigate. After initial feedback, Grange was almost relegated to the dustbin of history, yet it just managed to survive.

From the very earliest days, when the company was still family-owned, Penfolds often pushed the envelope into new regions and styles. When Coonawarra began showing promise as a winegrowing region in the 1950s, Penfolds was one of the leaders to stake its claim on prime sites, many of which are still in company hands to this day. Changes in ownership over the years did rein that back, but recent times have seen a roaring return, with current projects in Champagne, California and China illustrating a winery that is on the move and not content to sit back and smell the roses. As an aside, the white Grange project and the eventual development of the Yattarna Chardonnay, driven by Chief Winemaker John Duval in the early to mid-nineties, was also groundbreaking. This was arguably one of the key waypoints for Australian Chardonnay when quality began its move into the stratosphere. Penfolds’ innovations in the production of South Australian Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon, blends thereof and, more recently, Chardonnay have done much to redefine Australian wine styles. Plenty of winemakers still follow Penfolds’ lead, albeit occasionally begrudgingly.

Behind this innovative streak has been a plethora of experimental wine trials, many of which were never designed for commercial release. These trials were aimed at internal benchmarking and for use at wine shows to test broader appeal with small batches and minimal risk. This was a common strategy for many wineries at the time, during what were embryonic years for the industry. Penfolds Grange and Bin 707 began their lives as trial wines before graduating into regular releases. Up until the 1980s, these wine trials remained completely behind closed doors until the decision was made to start releasing limited stocks, many of which were shared amongst Penfolds’ family and friends.

Since the 1940s, each Penfolds Chief Winemaker has played their part in building the brand while probing opportunities, from Max Schubert’s pioneering of Grange and Coonawarra as a fine wine region to Peter Gago’s legacy, which is still being written. While every winery has its trial wines, most choose to keep them locked away from the prying eyes of wine writers and the general public. Penfolds’ unique mindset illustrates a confidence in their wines, sharing a part of their winemaking journey that is often hidden from view. These bottlings provide fascinating insights as to historic wines and mindsets at various times over the last 75 years. Originally described as experimental bottlings, these wines are now known as Penfolds Special Bins.

Very occasionally, Penfolds releases a new Special Bin, or older wines are viewed at a tasting or from a serious collector’s cellar, although these are rare occurrences. The last release of a Special Bin was the Bin 111A Clare/ Barossa Valley Shiraz blend, which hit the market in 2019, and before that, the 2008 Bin 620 Coonawarra Cabernet-Shiraz (released in 2011), illustrating the rarity of these wines.

Late last year, Penfolds opened the vault for a once-in-a-lifetime tasting of red wine Special Bins and other historic wines for the next upcoming edition of “The Rewards of Patience” (Penfolds’ exhaustive reference guide), reaching back over seven decades deep into the genesis of Australian fine wine. My Vinous predecessor, Josh Raynolds, took part in a similar tasting for the last edition of the guide.

This tasting in its entirety displayed the evolution of Penfolds and its continuing reliance on key vineyards that still underpin its leading labels. The pattern of changing vineyard ownership is also indelibly inked in the company’s wines. Acres of vines that once surrounded Penfolds’ home in Magill (now in the suburbs of Adelaide) were a key vineyard source for many years. However, over time, the creeping suburbs of Adelaide and urbanization reduced the vineyard’s footprint to the postage-stamp-sized Magill Estate. The odd aged trial wine showcases the region’s potential, which is now largely lost under housing.

A key initial source of material for Special Bins has been the Kalimna Block 42 Cabernet Sauvignon vineyard, planted as bush vines in 1888, reputedly the oldest significant planting for this variety anywhere in the world. In the early days, the Kalimna Vineyard was a large and important source of wine exported to England at the end of the nineteenth century. It totaled over 300 acres in size and was planted with Cabernet Sauvignon, Shiraz, Mataro and possibly other varieties. Penfolds purchased the vineyard in 1945 and it became an important centerpiece, including as the original home for Bin 28 and Bin 389, wines based on sandy soils in the western Barossa. The Kalimna Vineyard was also the source for experimental bottlings in the Grange program, beginning in 1948. With such a significant history of key wines, the Kalimna Vineyard could easily be considered the spiritual home of Penfolds. The original Cabernet Sauvignon vineyard survives today, although it is dotted with space where older vines have given up the ghost. Kalimna Shiraz has long been at the heart of the Special Bin program, some of which was planted in the nineteenth century. More modern renditions of Special Bins have also supplemented Kalimna Shiraz with fruit from Koonunga Hill and Clare Valley.

Ironically, for a winery so deeply tied to the Barossa, the addition of Coonawarra vineyards to the portfolio and the blending options they provide appears to have spurred Max Schubert’s creative juices. These sites remain a keystone to the Special Bin program. Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon was beginning to build some traction in the 1950s but the region remained a remote wine outpost exclusively managed by small family operations. Max Schubert had dreamt of crafting long-lived Cabernet Sauvignon, and the Barossa was unfortunately too variable in quality and yield vintage to vintage. Coonawarra local Bill Redman, keen to build Coonawarra’s reputation by bringing larger companies into the fold, managed to convince the Penfold family to invest in Coonawarra, initially with the purchase of Sharam’s Block in 1960. This took place despite Schubert’s initial skepticism due to Coonawarra’s climate, far cooler than Penfolds’ home further north in the Barossa. This was an immense leap of faith for Penfolds to expand into a region far from their spiritual center. The Sharam family was one of the original landholders who purchased land from John Riddoch around the turn of the century. Prime fruit is now regularly harvested off Blocks 5, 10 and 20. Coonawarra’s prime Terra Rossa soils (thin clays coloured by weathered iron oxide over a limestone base) and temperate climate yield classic claret styles that have proved to be a fantastic foil to the richer-toned Kalimna Shiraz.

The Coonawarra move proved particularly fortuitous thanks to the region’s potential to be complimentary as a blending partner for Barossa Shiraz, which was explored with various experimental wines. For example, Penfolds produced a 1962 Bin 60 that had a higher proportion of Kalimna Shiraz than the 1962 Bin 60A, Schubert settling on two-thirds Coonawarra and one-third Kalimna for the Bin 60A that has become an international icon. The Bin 60A was seen as the more successful of the two during internal trialing and was entered in the wine show system, picking up 19 trophies before it was retired. Sadly, the Bin 60, undoubtedly also quite special, never saw the light of day. Despite its success, the 60A was never sold commercially, with reference stocks kept solely to inform future generations of Penfolds winemakers. The importance of the 1962 Bin 60A cannot be overstated, as it was not only one of the first truly outstanding and long-lived Australian wines, but it also paved the way for the unique Australian red wine style.

The early Special Bins crafted by Max Schubert were no doubt important in the development of Grange as both a concept and a wine, starting with the almost mythical 1948 Kalimna Cabernet Sauvignon. The 1948 was produced when Schubert was still keen on Cabernet Sauvignon for his Grange project and was never released commercially. This 1948 Cabernet, less than a single barrel in total production and aged in older oak, was likely one of many data points in the development of the Grange concept. While the 1948 was not included in this tasting, the follow-up 1953 Bin 9 Grange Cabernet Sauvignon made an appearance and did not disappoint. What followed was a walk through key vintages from the 1950s, 1960s, 1980s and 1990s, all rare and historic wines, most (but not all) of which are still in peak condition. While there have been a plethora of experimental bottlings over the years, including from grapes such as Mataro and the Languedoc’s Œillade, what is particularly notable is that the vast majority of the greatest and longest-living wines come from a mix of Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz. The potential quality of these blends, whether from Coonawarra, Barossa Valley, or a combination of the two, is undeniable. Most of all, these wines showcased the early aspirations of a budding wine industry and a quiet confidence in its future.

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