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Available by the dozen
The Barossa Valley was planted extensively to Grenache, Mourvedre and Shiraz by early settlers. In the 1950s Penfolds started experimenting with the blend, trials which culminated in the release of Bin 138s forebears. An answer to the growing call for the highly perfumed and fleshy Rhone style of red, Bin 138 is sourced from old, low yielding Barossa Valley sites, much of the fruit from independent growers. This is a very special Penfolds red wine indeed, one of the few that remains in component form whilst maturing in small, well seasoned oak barrels. Bin 138 is a full bodied style with the emphasis on musky plum aromas and succulent sweet fruit. Vintage and the quality of fruit determine the final wine, hence varietal proportions vary accordingly. Normally half is Grenache wine with a balance of Mourvedre and Shiraz, picked from elder vineyards which yield small amounts of intensely flavoured fruit. Sumptuous, seamless and substantial yet charmingly unpretentious, the final wine makes it hard to separate the cepage into it's varietal components, a complex entrapment and entanglement of Barossa fruits, soil and sun. Bin 138 is assembled after several rackings and a year's maturation in a selection of prior use American oak hogsheads.
TASTING NOTESDense magenta colour. Aromatic leap from the glass, savoury and Rhônish, cold meats and pan jus, cinnamon, raspberry and red liquorice, dark red berried fruits and jelly bean. Medium to full bodied, substantial structual verging on lush, viscous youth. A suggestion of kirsch and maraschino, fruitcake mix. White chocolate and mocha flavours over powdery, soft rounded tannins. |
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Penfolds was founded by a young English doctor who migrated to one of his country's most distant colonies a century and a half ago
Dr Christopher Rawson Penfold was born in 1811, the youngest of 11 children. He studied medicine at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London, graduating in 1838. Like many doctors before and since, Dr Penfold had a firm belief in the medicinal value of wine. Before he left Britain he had obtained vine cuttings from the south of France and these were planted around the site of the modest stone cottage he built with his wife, Mary, at Magill on the outskirts of Adelaide in 1845. The couple called this house The Grange, after Mary's home in England. Penfolds»
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