Hill of Grace vs Grange

[RooFlyer]

Interesting article from Alan Kohler on HoG Vs Grange. (Excerpts posted below)

I've been buying HoG and Henschke reds for many years and they comprise about 1/3 of my 'cellar (rest being about 1/3 Rockford and 1/3 other, including some whites!). The $650 for the recently released 2010 made me wince though.

I've only had Grange rarely, but I doubt I could say one was better than the other even if I had them side-by-side. I'm happy to stick with HoG, but going forward, might be equally happy to up the Mt Edelstone order!

 

[nonpop]

Interesting article from Alan Kohler on HoG Vs Grange.

Subscriber only article is the message I am getting.

 

[RooFlyer]

Sorry; here are some excepts:

Australia might witness a very unusual price war before long — a tussle to be the nation’s most expensive wine.

The Barossa Valley’s Henschke family have decided they the want their iconic Hill of Grace Shiraz, generally regarded as the second best Australian wine, to sell at a higher price point than Treasury Wine Estate’s Penfolds Grange, and thus become seen as Australia’s best.

How Treasury CEO Michael Clarke and his team would respond to this is not clear: a company spokesman declined to comment yesterday, but there’s not much doubt they would respond.

Both businesses agree that at this level, price is one factor in determining which of these two great labels is Australia’s greatest, especially on the global market. At the moment, it’s Grange.

It’s all a bit ironic in the light of last night’s story on the ABC’s 7.30 program about heartbroken Riverland grape growers ploughing in their vineyards because they can’t make enough money to cover their costs.

But one of the key reasons the wine industry is in trouble is that most Australian wines are sold into the commodity end of the global market, not the premium end, so the wineries are price-takers. That does not apply to the two labels occupying the top shelf.

There’s not much doubt that it’s a two-way contest between these two 60-year-old reds, Grange and Hill of Grace, and it’s also fair to say there’s both not much between them and a world of difference.
They both consistently score 98 or 99 out of 100 and are world-class examples of Shiraz winemaking. Both are smooth and deep, complex and multi-layered. Each has its fanatical devotees but, as with all wine, in the end it comes down to personal taste.

But there are two important differences: first, Grange is a blend while Hill of Grace is single vineyard, and second, on the Penfolds website the 2009 Grange currently sells for $785 while the 2009 Hill of Grace is listed at $595. There is a range of different price points for various vintages, and while Grange is always dearer the average difference is probably around $100.

That a blend is regarded as clearly Australia‘s top wine is an amazing tribute to the man who created Grange Hermitage for Penfolds in 1951, Max Schubert, as well as the three chief winemakers who have followed him — Don Ditter, John Duval and the current one, Peter Gago.

And the story of this wine, this vineyard and this family business is indeed a rich one, made more so by more than a century and a half of continuous family ownership.

Actually, the Hill of Grace vineyard, planted in 1860, is not owned by Stephen and Prue Henschke, but by their cousins, Christopher and Leanne, who inherited it from their father Louis. They sell the grapes each year to Stephen and Prue (although there have been four years when there was no vintage — 1960, 1974, 2000 and 2011).

The vineyard wasn’t actually planted by the Henschkes, but by another German family, the Stanitzkis and it was owned by them until Paul Alfred Henschke, Stephen’s grandfather, bought it from them in the 1950s.

And then in one of this prolific family’s many complicated succession events, the Hill of Grace vineyard was settled on Louis, not Stephen’s father Cyril.

The business was originally started in 1841 by Johann Christian Henschke, a Silesian Lutheran fleeing persecution in Prussia. He arrived alone in Adelaide with two children, after his wife and one child died at sea, and eventually settled at Krondorf in the Barossa Valley with his second wife, Dorothea Schmidt.

They had eight more children (“there was no TV in those days”, says Stephen) and planted a small vineyard and started making claret plus, of course, German-style riesling.

The third child of Johann’s second marriage was Paul Gotthard Henschke, who ended up inheriting the business. His fourth child was Paul Alfred, who took over the business in 1914 and his youngest child (of 12 children — there was still no TV) was Cyril Alfred, who eventually inherited the business, while the others got vineyards or cash.

(As an aside, Stephen talks about the “Barossa System”, in which the youngest child always inherits the core family business because the older children have been given vineyards or other assets as their start in life, and what’s left goes to the youngest. Except that the Barossa System has only ever applied to Henschkes once.)

Cyril became one of Australia’s greatest winemakers alongside Max Schubert and was encouraged to move out of fortifieds and into table wines by the pioneering Sydney restaurateur, Beppi Polese, whose Italian restaurant opened in Paddington in 1956 (it’s still there). Beppi was the first to introduce Australians to Italian food and southern European table wines.

In that same year, Cyril Henschke entered his Mt Edelstone Shiraz into the Royal Sydney Show and the Adelaide Show, and won first prize in both. Henschke wine was on the map.