There are legends and there are LEGENDS. And Penfolds, as if you didn’t already know, is a purveyor of the capital letter latter.

The list of the winery’s accolades is long; the 1955 Grange was named one of the top 12 wines of the 20th Century. A single bottle of the same vintage was sold at auction in 2017 for a staggering $50,000 AUD (€30,000), breaking the world record for Australian wine. A bottle of the 1951 is currently on sale for over €45,000 on wine-searcher.com. The 1971 vintage was named “the greatest wine of the 1970s”, and the 2008 gained a perfect 100-point score from both Wine Spectator and Robert Parker's Wine Advocate. We could go on.

Penfolds has a history to match its distinctions. Founded in 1844 by Christopher Penfold, the winery quickly became Australia leading producer and by 1907 it was the largest winery in the country. However, the Penfolds name is synonymous with Grange, the wine that launched the winery into the stratosphere. The 15% Shiraz, 85% Cabernet Sauvignon is the result of Max Schubert’s (Penfold’s winemaker at the time) “bin” experiments. The experiments were a pet project of Schubert’s, who would blend certain grapes of varying amounts and see what happened. Grange 1955 was bin 95. Another bin wine, Bin 707, was also a resounding success for the Australian wine industry. While Grange 1955 is extremely rare – there are said to be less than 20 bottles remaining - Bin 707 can still be picked up on the secondary market. You’ll need deep pockets though, as the wine sells for well over €5,500 (Q3 2019). This is actually down from the high of Q3 2017, where the vintage was garnering almost €7,200. Not bad considering the original plot of land, with vines, cost Penfold £1,200.

Unsurprisingly, Penfolds and its extensive portfolio are considered benchmarks of the Australian wine industry. However, it is not all about the past; since 2011 the company has belonged to Treasury Wine Estates who have treated the legacy with great care. Modern signature wines such as Grange, Bin 707, Bin 620 and Bin 60a (a vintage of which is in Decanter’s Hall of Fame) are more or less available on the secondary market, both in bond and in bottle, and show great market ROI.