The Auswine Forum

Penfolds winery seeing red
7news Adelaide
Deanna Williams reports.
June 13, 6:59 pm

Sixty-year-old vines from the iconic Penfolds winery have been ripped out and destroyed, leaving some local residents seeing red.

https://au.news.yahoo.com/video/watch/3 ... ds-winery/

I was pretty shocked to see this, half of the 5 hectares of 60 year old vines being completely ripped out and replanted - the scale and apparent urgency this is happening doesn't seem to exactly tie in with the public line that it's all part of standard ongoing maintenance/rejuvination. If it was a few rows/blocks per year I would understand, but half the vineyard, with the scale of the bulldozers destruction in full sight of the visiting wine lovers/tourists?

So what would that make Magill now Ian?
New vines, no further up the pecking order than 28/128?
Or with less than half of the old stocks left, a massive price increase perhaps...new Magill or old Magill?

Its probably, largely for sentimental reasons and its single vineyard status that sees it as my favourite in all of the portfolio.

Seems a really strange and rather dumb decision

Cheers
Craig

Guess it depends on the underlying health and productivity of the existing vines. For example, when we look at what has happened in Coonawarra over the last ten years or a little more. Some vineyards get to the stage where there is disease and other problems that mean that the vineyard is not as productive as it could be. Wynns and Bowen Estate a case in point where strong vineyard management has seen rejuvenation and/or replanting of stocks. I for one don't go for the romance if ultra-old vines to the exclusion of other factors (and I have been in the HoG Grandather Block where there are some gnarly old dudes), so maybe they feel that it's time to rip out some non-performing stock. Ok, it's got some emotional factors, but maybe be its right from a viticulture point if view.

Obviously my comments from afar.

My guess is it will go the same way as Kalimna and Koonunga Hill, a brand rather than a true single vineyard wine. This will be the excuse to perform the transformation.

left field thought. If phylloxera was found in a vine then that would necessitate an urgent vine pull

crusty2 wrote:left field thought. If phylloxera was found in a vine then that would necessitate an urgent vine pull

I was thinking about this.

Remember the thread on Phylloxera about 4 years ago on the other forum about easing some of the restrictions in South Aus.

Cheers Con.

Interesting...
If ripped out suddenly due to disease, would Pennies want to broadcast this as a legitimate reason for removal?
Or would there be mass hysteria through the company, and other TWE vineyards in SA that this might be a more widespread problem?

I take your point Malcolm about rejuvenating a vineyard, but when said vineyard to begin with is just a few hectares, and more than 50% removed on mass, then perhaps there is more here than meets the eye.
Surely if its phylloxera, then a 3 metre strip of bitumen driveway separating south from north would do absolutely nothing, and the whole lot would have to go.

Cheers
Craig

The talking heads at Penfold's specifically used the term "rejuvenation" so I cannot see how it could be due to phylloxera. I would have thought that somthing as serious as phylloxera would not be kept secret from the industry and other vineyard owners who would want to take precautionary measures.

Penfold's, like other large-scale producers, have been more wedded to the brand concept rather than the single-vineyard. I can see how their idea corporate branding would see single vineyard production as a limiting factor in their marketing plans. To increase production of Magill Estate the wine would need to become a non-vineyard wine and hence there would be no need for keeping the 60 year-old vines.

Just my 2 cents worth.................Mahmoud.

Pennies has a bizarre single vineyard policy.

Time to take a deep breath...

At the time of the 2014 heatwave during verasion I said the vines did not look good, and in the following two years despite decent grape quality, yields were down, the berries were small, and the vines still visually looked less than good. I was concerned enough to send photos to get second opinions from some winemakers/grapegrowers, which did not exactly lessen those concerns.

The fact that they have decided to rejuvinate the vineyards to me is not a huge shock, it is the scale, the urgency and the public nature they are doing it which is.

There is a precident in Wynns where they have undergone a massive rejuvination process - in that case there was a huge number/hectares of vineyards involved, and the process has been extensively documented and has proven to be successful, from the beheading of the Glengyle vineyard to the complete bulldozing and replanting of Childs vineyard (and the universal success of the 2012 single vineyard Childs cabernet that came after only a few years after the bulldozing).

So there is a closely related precident from Treasury/Fosters/Southcorp, maybe it was a recognition that drastic change was needed? Magill Estate itself was planted of clones from the original Grange vineyard, and I expect they will do the same or someting similar this time around. But the question still remains, these were 60 year old vines that were manually pruned and harvested and should be around their prime, what was the problem that was so severe that half of the vineyard had to be completely ripped out and replaced?

When I posed this to a winemaker friend, he suggested that maybe the clones/rootstock were possibly not sturdy enough to handle the heatwave conditions, even with the supplementary drip irrigation that had been there for years but not deemed necessary to switch on until 2007. Already in this thread, the dreaded P word has been mentioned - I sincerely hope this is way off the mark and Treasury are not stupid enough to try and cover it up, because if they do the whole South Australian wine industry has just become a zombie, it's dead but doesn't know it yet.

I'd expect that this wasn't a decision taken lightly, but I doubt that the P word is involved. If it was, I doubt that any of the vineyard would still be there.
The way I see it, there would be a few considerations - Overall vine health, yield, risk mitigation and is the estate bottling giving the winemakers what they are looking for.
I'd expect that the drought has taken its toll and I'd imagine that that the vine behavior has been monitored very carefully in the last few years to see what sort of recovery was happening. Yield may be an issue... at what point do low yielding grapes become commercially un-viable? Have observations indicated that the vines only have a relatively short term future, and this is a degree of future planning? Are the winemakers prepared to give up a handful of years because they think a better wine can be made from a blend of old and young vines? More cynically, will scarcity of supply be used to drive hefty price increases?
Maybe the indicators din't give them much reason to stagger the plantings more. Perhaps they regret not starting this on a smaller scale directly after the drought.
There is a lot of emphasis put on old vines, but is this an over emphasis? As I understand it, Grange has a portion of fruit from young vines in the mix, while Ian has pointed out the Wynns example. I'm a bit of a port fan, and the vintage port that is regarded as the best ever made - the 31 Noval Nacional was made from vines that were just 6 years old.

There were a few snarky people on the news report demanding explanations - I wonder how many interviews they had to carry out to find enough moral outrage?

The speed of the removal doesn't mean too much, if you are going to remove vines you don't need to move slow. I imagine that it has been on the list for removal for a while and when they got permission to rip them out they didn't wait for anyone to change their mind.

No way is it phylloxera, as you would of heard by now, most likely low vigour, low yields and low quality, just because you are old, doesn't mean the fruit is any good. Its not like they are original vines anyway.

I would hate to think how many reports were done before the dozer went in.

n4sir wrote:Time to take a deep breath...

At the time of the 2014 heatwave during verasion I said the vines did not look good, and in the following two years despite decent grape quality, yields were down, the berries were small, and the vines still visually looked less than good. I was concerned enough to send photos to get second opinions from some winemakers/grapegrowers, which did not exactly lessen those concerns.

The fact that they have decided to rejuvinate the vineyards to me is not a huge shock, it is the scale, the urgency and the public nature they are doing it which is.

There is a precident in Wynns where they have undergone a massive rejuvination process - in that case there was a huge number/hectares of vineyards involved, and the process has been extensively documented and has proven to be successful, from the beheading of the Glengyle vineyard to the complete bulldozing and replanting of Childs vineyard (and the universal success of the 2012 single vineyard Childs cabernet that came after only a few years after the bulldozing).

So there is a closely related precident from Treasury/Fosters/Southcorp, maybe it was a recognition that drastic change was needed? Magill Estate itself was planted of clones from the original Grange vineyard, and I expect they will do the same or someting similar this time around. But the question still remains, these were 60 year old vines that were manually pruned and harvested and should be around their prime, what was the problem that was so severe that half of the vineyard had to be completely ripped out and replaced?

When I posed this to a winemaker friend, he suggested that maybe the clones/rootstock were possibly not sturdy enough to handle the heatwave conditions, even with the supplementary drip irrigation that had been there for years but not deemed necessary to switch on until 2007. Already in this thread, the dreaded P word has been mentioned - I sincerely hope this is way off the mark and Treasury are not stupid enough to try and cover it up, because if they do the whole South Australian wine industry has just become a zombie, it's dead but doesn't know it yet.

I don't see this as a phylloxera issue, it seems more akin to what's happened in Coonawarra as I mentioned earlier and Ian has also alluded to. Vines don't last forever, if they don't then there's a reason, not the right clones, (low level) disease, drought stress etc etc. You don't have to demand keeping 60yo old vines to maintain the integrity of the vineyard, if that's what they are. Just being old doesn't mean good. Assuming they replant now or soon, maybe in five-six years time, the outcome will be even better, similar to what Ian mentioned with the Wynns Childs Block vineyard. Another note from Coonawarra, by now, none of the vines in Bowen Estate are the original vines from the first vintage some forty years ago. The entire vineyard has been replanted to improve fruit (and wine) quality. Out with the romance and in with science.

The plantings in block 2 were mainly from late 60s and the rows infront of the restaurant were transplanted from the Eden Valley in the early 1990s. Original Grange vines surround the cottage.
Cuttings to be planted from Kalimna, strong components from 3C (bin 170) amongst others.
Bordeaux and Burgundy replanted every 30-40 years, however not as publically as a suburban vineyard obviously.
Cuttings to be planted September October this year.
Vine density to be increased so as to encourage competition between the vines. "French Style" planting.
less fruit per vine but of more intensity.
Watch this space

cruising past on the pushy swung into pennies to see how the new vines are progressing.

I've heard on good authority that a Chinese billionaire has bought the vines and is shipping them back to be re-planted in China. He feels Penfolds have lost the plot regarding their pricing policy, and that it would be cheaper making Grange and G3 in China. Peter Gago is expected to fly over at vintage.

Scotty vino wrote:cruising past on the pushy swung into pennies to see how the new vines are progressing.

PENSIGN.jpg

I like the fact the words "new vines" are not italic in contrast to the rest ... makes it look like a standard statement where they can change this part!

Or maybe they just had a poor proof-reader...