About
Stephen’s interest in Grenache stretches back to the mid-nineties. Upon arriving in McLaren Vale, a preference for making medium bodied wine led Stephen to Grenache and the love affair began. Given the region’s warm Mediterranean climate and proximity to the ocean Grenache is ideally suited to McLaren Vale and perfectly at home with our food and lifestyle.
Stephen proudly states, whenever given the opportunity, that McLaren Vale Grenache ages more gracefully than Shiraz. Grenache is well on its way to becoming McLaren Vale’s most recognised wine and our true wine of place.
The Vintage
The second year of the current La Nina cycle saw a wild, wet winter and spring followed by a mild summer and a dry autumn. Veraison was two weeks behind normal, setting winemakers' teeth on edge. All were keen to get into vintage but were forced to wait, which made for some very clean wineries prior to harvest. Poor flowering due to wild spring weather including high winds, frost and hail led to lower than desired yields. Quality was good due to the long, slow ripening period. Whites retained great acidity and reds developed depth of flavour and complex tannins. A vintage to watch!
"Spend a few minutes talking to anyone who knows about wine and you’ll be told that grenache is “so hot right now”. It’s true. We are living in the Golden Age of Australian grenache.
But the man who has done more than just about anyone to get us there reckons winemakers need to do more. “We’ve seduced everyone with fragrance, but the key to really great grenache is tannin and the tension that brings,” says Steve Pannell on the release of three single-vineyard wines he reckons are the best he’s ever made. He’s right on both counts.
Grenache will always deliver fragrance, although it can be spread across a range that extends from Cary Grant and a delicate spray of Penhaligon’s to randy teenager getting ready for a date with a can of Lynx. The wines that really express the profound beauty of this variety, however, anchor that aromatic flightiness to a bedrock of structural grit. And the key to that is serious work in the vineyard.
Bush vines are a good start. No variety is diminished by the rigour of trellising quite like grenache, but as Pannell has learned over many years, it’s the fine art of achieving evenness of setup and yield within the reasonably random nature of a bush vine vineyard that’s really required. While two of the wines in this release come from vineyards he’s worked with for some time, the third, Little Branch, comes from a 9ha vineyard in the Blewitt Springs sub-region he and his wife Fiona purchased in 2021.
Previously set up to the standards of a different winemaking approach, the vineyard required a great deal of hands-on work to come into the kind of balance that Pannell felt would deliver the inherent tannin tension he was looking for.
That work has paid off in spades. These are wines with both treble and bass."
2022 SC Pannell Single Vineyard Grenache Release
2022 Smart Grenache
Winemaking
Variety: Grenache Noir/ Garnacha Tinta / Ganaxa / Cannonau – whatever the name, it's all the same to us!
Varietal Origin: Sardinia or Spain; an ancient variety with origins that are hotly contested.
Vineyard: Smart Vineyard, Clarendon. 67 year old unirrigated bush vines grown on 750 million year old soils comprised of laminated dark and green siltstone at 230m above sea level. Farmed by Wayne Smart.
Process: Hand harvested on the 16th of March and immediately crushed. Fermented in one stainless steel open top fermenter with regular pump overs, 20% whole bunch. Left on skins for 10 days before a gentle press. Settled in tank for 24 days before transfer to an old French oak vat and two puncheons for malolactic fermentation and extended maturation. Racked twice and bottled without fining, filtration, additions, or adjustment on the 6th September 2023.
Alcohol: 14%
Ph: 3.23
Total Sulphur: 53ppm
For the Senses
Flavour Profile: Luxardo, cherry pits, rhubarb, raspberry, and nutty aromas present as big truck loaded with flavour and headed for your palate without so much as a warning toot of the horn. Reluctant to describe our Grenache as Pinot-like, this vintage sees us reaching for descriptors that remind us of Pomard: red liquorice, caramelising sugar in a hot pan, and rose water.
Structure & Texture: Hits the palate with force and then flexes its tannins like a Venice Beach bodybuilder. It's a big whack of flavour and texture all at once, with an addictive energy that carries past the back palate before revealing a subtle wave of musk flavours - all without losing sight of a medium-bodied focus.
Cellaring: Many, many years of ageing potential, try 20+.
Serving: The protein is easy, but this match is all about the sauce. Try grilled ribeye or the Mushroom and Haloumi Stack with Pepper Sauce from 'Meatsmith' by Andrew McConnell and Troy Wheeler.
Review by Ned Goodwin MW for James Suckling.com
“An excellent vintage, low yielding, cool and attenuated. Scents of spiced Damson plums, wood, berries, graphite and almond husks, with iron notes and tannins in the long, streamlined finish. From a wonderful old-vine site in Clarendon that stretches the possibilities of grenache. Wonderful stuff built for the cellar.”
96 Points
Review by Nick Ryan at The Weekend Australian Magazine
"The Smart vineyard is in a slightly more elevated site in Clarendon, in the Adelaide Hills, that consistently delivers Grenache with tightly pulled focus. This is the coiled and wound one, the stand-offish and reserved one. It’s Grenache with a Nebbiolo fetish. Dark raspberry fruit, pippy and fresh. Purity and precision." 14% abv.
97 points
Winefront Review by Mike Bennie
Posted on 17 May 2024
"While the 2022 season seems to have had it all, rain, wind, hail, late flowering, frost, the resulting Pannell grenache wines seem to find great balance even though they seem a little riper, sweet-hearted and softer than some of the previous vintages. This Smart grenache comes, of course, from the Smart vineyard in Clarendon – near 70 year old bush vines grown on siltstone. A portion (20%) of whole bunch makes a mark, lifting things nicely. It feels like a year for S.C. Pannell to lean into whole bunches. Ten days on skins.
Really attractive perfume of alpine herbs, almost genepy-like amaro character, sour cherry, faint maraschino cherry, cranberry and rose hip tea. The palate has a good sinewy bite around the more juicy, ripe red and black cherry flavours, some pomegranate juice notes, straight raspberry, more rose hip tea and a dose of Indian fennel candy character too. It’s kind of exotic, in the best sense, but all the elements play superbly together and it feels bright and fresh. Over medium weight, just, with building pucker of Italianate tannin. This is the pick of the 2022s for me, at a pinch, perhaps, but the one I want to drink the most of with its intrigue and complexity on show."
95 points
2022 Little Branch Grenache
Winemaking
Variety: Grenache Noir/ Garnacha Tinta / Ganaxa / Cannonau – whatever the name, it's all the same to us!
Varietal Origin: Sardinia or Spain; an ancient variety with origins that are hotly contested.
Vineyard: Little Branch vineyard, Blewitt Springs. 30 year old unirrigated, trellised vines grown from 50 million year old soils comprised of Maslin Beach sands, flecked with ironstone at 140m above sea level. Purchased by Stephen and Fiona in 2021.
Process: Our first red wine harvest and ferment from the Little Branch vineyard. Picked on the 16th of March and immediately crushed. Carefully fermented in stainless steel with a small percentage of whole bunch. Left on skins for 13 days before pressing. Settled in tank for 16 days before transfer to old French oak vats for malolactic fermentation and extended maturation. Bottled without fining on the 16th August 2023.
Alcohol: 14%
Ph: 3.39
TA: 6.2
Total Sulphur: 53ppm
For the Senses
Flavour Profile: Spice from the start: cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, cassia then spun sugar, toffee apple and red fruits, now rose oil, leaf litter, cedar and red brick; aromas that sway and swirl. Bright red fruits dominate the palate before a zephyr of spice, and a finish laced with musk.
Structure & Texture: Suave, sophisticted and intellectual, turning it on before stealing your wallet, and yet, a yearning for more. Stealthy tannin hidden by complex flavours. The texture has a pink hue and slips past the front palate with barely a ripple before building quickly to the back and travelling on. Flavours and textures that stay with you long past the first sip.
Cellaring: The first vintage so we'll hedge our bets and say 10+ years.
Serving: The protein is easy, but this match is all about the sauce. Try grilled ribeye or the Mushroom and Haloumi Stack with Red Wine Sauce from 'Meatsmith' by Andrew McConnell and Troy Wheeler.
Review by Ned Goodwin MW for James Suckling.com
“This is an impactful Grenache made by somebody who prizes Italian wines. The tannins are an immense force field, with kirsch, strawberries and dried Mediterranean herbs, and a note of almond husk that gives noble bitterness. The density, poise and grace are thoroughly impressive. This is a structured Grenache built for the cellar.”
97 Points
Review by Nick Ryan at The Weekend Australian Magazine
"The effusive one, the fragrant one, the one that gesticulates with a flourish. Dark cherries, raspberries and rabarbaro liqueur, some rubbed rosemary grip. It’s supple but fine-grained in texture, with the finest, high-definition tannins –immeasurable pixels fanning out to wide-screen finish." 14% abv.
95 points
Winefront Review by Mike Bennie
Posted on 17 May 2024
"A new wine! Hark! This is a grenache from Blewitt Springs and 30 year old vines grown on sand (with ironstone). This is a vineyard of Pannell family custodianship. A touch of whole bunch in the ferment, and 13 days on skins.
In the bouquet, lots of cherry elixir, maraschino, pickled cherry, strawberry, raspberry lollies and whiffs of aniseed, cola and cardamom/caraway seed savouriness. The palate an able reflection of the bouquet, a cinch of building, dusty tannin wraps up soft, sweeter fruit character, cherry-berry things, lollies and jamminess underlying. The finish a touch breathy with a young port kind of character. It feels work in progress for balance, and maturity should deliver the savoury edge some seek. Good drinking, in its youthful vigour, however."
93+ points
2022 Old McDonald Grenache
Winemaking
Variety: Grenache Noir/ Garnacha Tinta / Ganaxa / Cannonau – whatever the name its all the same to us!
Varietal Origin: Sardinia or Spain; an ancient variety with origins that are hotly contested.
Vineyard: Plaisted's vineyard, McLaren Vale. 80 year old 'bush on a wire', dry grown on 50 million year old soils comprised of Maslin Beach sand at an altitude of 80m above sea level. Farmed by Matt Hatwell.
Process: Hand harvested on the 1st of March and delicately crushed. Fermented in one stainless steel open-top fermenter with regular pump overs, 20% whole bunch. Left on skins for 15 days before a gentle press. Settled in tank for 15 days before transfer to an old French oak vat for malolactic fermentation and extended maturation. Racked twice and bottled without fining, additions, or adjustment on the 8th of February 2023.
Alcohol: 14.0%
Ph: 3.37
TA: 6
Total Sulphur: 56ppm
For the Senses
Flavour Profile: Energised and complex - so typical of McLaren Vale Grenache in a cooler year. The primary aromas are amped and loaded with tension: chorizo and sweet paprika followed by blood orange, pomegranate and Turkish delight. A year for darker flavours: blackberry and dark cherry compote served in a rose garden.
Structure & Texture: A blanket of flavour dialling up the power but delivered with grace and poise by tannins that throw shapes across the palate, starting with squares, progressing to spheres and finally the classic fine talc on a stylish finish that doesn't fade. Medium bodied perfection.
Cellaring: Many, many years of ageing potential, try 15+
Serving: The protein is easy, but this match is all about the sauce. Try grilled rib eye, or the Mushroom and Haloumi Stack with Bordelaise Sauce from 'Meatsmith' by Andrew McConnell and Troy Wheeler.
Ned Goodwin MW for James Suckling.com
“This is a chunky, earthy expression of Grenache in this exceptional vintage. Notes of pickled ginger, tamarind and dark cherries. Hints of moss and iodine across the forceful, slightly drying finish. This is an immense wine, typical of the style that defines the region, which produces some of the very finest expressions of Grenache in the world.”
95 Points
Review by Nick Ryan at The Weekend Australian Magazine
"The darker one, the broody one, the one that reads Camus and smokes French durries. It’s layered, reserved, a slow reveal. Raspberries, some blackcurrant, a char siu meatiness, a compote core wrapped up tight in tannins. This is the one to spend time with – and allow it time to reveal itself." 14% abv.
95 points
Winefront Review by Mike Bennie
Posted on 17 May 2024
"Despite the cooler year, and the vagaries of the season, the Pannell grenaches of 2022 feel riper and fuller in essence. Not a bad thing, just a piece of commentary with the suite in front of me.
Potent, full flavoured, decidedly ripe in fruit spectrum, sweet in its profile albeit tempered with pleasing bitter herbal elements, savoury notes and saline mineral characters. That being said, there’s some slurpiness here, despite a web of fine, silty tannins lending crunch and sandy pucker. Scents of ripe plum, raspberry jam, black jelly beans, sage leaf and bergamot tea. Exotic, and delightful. The sweetness is apparent to taste, a slick film on the palate and yet tannin profile tends to a chew and grip. It’s a heartier red, in its way, and does it all well."
94 points
(Image: Stephen Pannell - SC Pannell / www.pannell.com.au)