Writing as a recent visitor to Penfolds’ Magill Estate and its restaurant and having recently sat through a brilliant tasting with Penfolds oenologist Peter Gago featuring Special Bin reds going back to 1962, I reckon I’m in a fine position to speak highly of Penfolds’ inaugural Wine and Food Experience at Magill Estate. The Magill Estate Restaurant is the showpiece of a brilliant restoration, still to be fully completed, of the working, functional Magill winery, home of the Magill Estate Shiraz. A spectacular new construction which places the diner just above old vine level and able to look over a distant view towards central Adelaide beyond, the building houses the best winery restaurant in Australia. You would expect nothing less of Southcorp, which has wisely spent $10 million to create a winery hospitality/visitor centre able to rival anything I have seen in Europe. The restaurant’s expansive panes of glass are raised in warmer months, so despite the five-star environs you might as well be in the vineyard itself. Large blinds are raised in keeping with the sun’s movements so glare and direct sunlight are minimised. You could live there. The Wine and Food Experience, which will take place on the weekend of November 15-17 this year, is limited to a mere 85 people, so get in quick. The itinerary opens at 6.00 pm on the Friday with a Penfolds Classic Wine Auction conducted in association with Langton’s Fine Wine Auctions by the ubiquitous Andrew Caillard MW, who says the Penfolds portfolio is the strongest sector of the growing secondary wine market in Australia, Europe and Asia. The auction features around 350 lots of Penfolds wines, carefully chosen from private collectors and from Penfolds’ own old cellar stocks. After the auction, it’s off to the restaurant for the first of the two dinners scheduled for the weekend. The first focuses on the estate’s own wine, the Magill Estate Shiraz, still made in the working section of the estate’s winery. Two masterclasses and lunch are arranged for the Saturday, one on Penfolds Special Bin wines, the other on the blend of fortified wines used to top up the Grandfather Port solera each year. Attendees will taste the historic 1962 Bin 60A, widely regarded as one of the greatest wines ever made in this country, as well as the rare 1967 Bin 7, which knocked the socks of a lucky group including myself and James Halliday in Perth recently. The other great, great wine of this tasting will be the 1990 Bin 90A, a Cabernet Sauvignon of such extraordinary richness and texture that the wonderful Grange of the same year looks almost shy by comparison. Saturday’s lunch highlights the company’s developments in the Adelaide Hills, where Penfolds are developing experimental wines from red and white varieties, including some excellent trial efforts as part of the so-called ‘White Grange’ programme. Dinner that night will be the weekend’s highlight, featuring mature whites and reds including Grange. A Picnic and Barrel Tasting on Sunday will feature the Penfolds 1996 reds, the first time an immature Grange has ever been offered for public tasting. At $450 per head, this weekend offers a spectacular red carpet opportunity to experience the Penfolds at its best, especially when you consider that certain vintages of Grange fetch more than the asking price on the auction market. Whether you’re able to make the Wine and Food Experience or not, I expect you will find a visit to Magill Estate an intriguing experience. Guests are taken on tours around the old cellars where Max Schubert used to work and can visit the Grange Cottage where Penfolds’ founder, Dr Christopher Rawson Penfold had up his home and his surgery. Although the winery is still used for a short time each year, the ghosts of vintages past can certainly be felt in dimly-lit underground cellars and in the silence of the main fermentation cellar. Southcorp deserves great credit for the quality of its restoration and for shunning any outward signs of commercialism on the historic site. The only regret I experienced on leaving was that Penfolds saw fit to sell off much of the old Magill Estate vineyard in 1982.
