Grange, Penfolds 1991

Medium brick colored with a garnet core, the 1991 Grange has a wonderful perfume of black and red fruits preserves, prunes, figs and plum preserves with suggestions of licorice and dark chocolate. Medium to full-bodied, rich, powerful and spicy right through the long finish, this Grange still has loads of life and should cellar for another 10-20 years.

This wine is generous, open, and sweet in its personality. Dense purple, this blend of 95% Shiraz and 5% Cabernet Sauvignon shows great fruit, a very lush, open-knit style with full body, high glycerin, low acidity, and superb purity. It is a very jammy, voluptuous wine, dominated by its creme de cassis fruit intermixed with tar and licorice. Anticipated maturity: now-2017.

The 1991 Grange seems to be at a serene stage of evolution: refined, airy and unthusting just now. On the palate, it’s pure, poised, sustained, long and elegant, with head-turning curranty fruit and a fine-stranded textural mane: a Margaux-like Grange. Just five per cent Cabernet, but you might easily guess it was more

The 1991 Grange shocked me with its sweet, forward display of jammy black fruits, smoke, roasted coffee, and copious toasty oak scents and flavors. It is seemingly more forward than other recent vintages, but that could be because this viscous, low acid, massively endowed wine's structural components (acidity and tannin) are buried beneath a cascade of sweet, unctuously-textured fruit. This mouthfilling Grange, a humongous example of a dry red wine, is nearly impossible to match with food, but these wines inevitably become more complex and civilized with 10 or more years of cellaring. Look for the 1991 Grange to compete with, but never eclipse the great 1990, 1986, and 1982. It will last and evolve for 20-25 y