The fame of Bin 60A has reached all corners of the globe. Max Schubert’s direct contemporary Andre Tchelistcheff (1901–1994), the founding father of the modern California wine industry, once announced to a room of startled Napa Valley vignerons, ‘Gentlemen, you will all stand in the presence of this wine!’ Australian winemakers generally acknowledge the wine as a modern classic of profound and enduring academic importance. Leading critic Len Evans (1930–2006), who apparently brought that bottle to California, once described the wine as ‘one of the great reds I cut my palate on, and proved forever that the two varieties can blend beautifully together’. James Halliday, Australia’s leading wine author, once described it as ‘an utterly superb wine, a glorious freak of nature and Man; ethereal and beguiling, yet the palate is virtually endless, with a peacock’s tail stolen from the greatest of Burgundies; the fruit sweetness perfectly offset by acidity rather than VA. The 100-point dry red? Why not?’ and gut-feel transcend numbers. Max Schubert pushed boundaries, because he wasn’t constrained by scientific dogma and he dared to believe in himself. Peter Gago, Penfold’s Chief Winemaker The stories of Grange and the legendary 1962 Bin 60A Cabernet Shiraz epitomise how imagination
SOURCES Penfolds Collection 2022 The Australian Ark , to be published 2023
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The Vintage Journal – Verticals
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