Caroline Frey and Peter Gago introduce Neil Beckett to 2021 Grange La Chapelle, a blend which seems at once almost unimaginable and written in the stars.
Origin, identity, individuality, quality—all are crucial questions for fine wine. And they are particularly searching, stimulating questions to ask of this new one, the prodigious Syrah/Shiraz offspring of two very distinguished parents: Domaine de la Chapelle’s Hermitage La Chapelle and Penfolds Grange.
It is in many ways a very modern wine, the brainchild of two adventurous, broad-minded, well-educated, well-traveled winemakers: Caroline Frey, whose family owns, among other wine estates, Domaine de la Chapelle and Paul Jaboulet Aîné, the négociant house that made Hermitage La Chapelle famous through legendary vintages such as the 1961 and 1978; and Peter Gago, chief winemaker at Penfolds since 2002, the creator of Grange, Australia’s most famous wine, and curator of the rest of the company’s unparalleled range, to which he has added several remarkable wines. This latest is modern not least in that it would never have been possible without the many new techniques and tools used in its production.
But both parents of this modern wine have a distinguished lineage and much older origins. La Chapelle derives its name from the Chapel of St Christopher, built in the 13th century at the top of the great Hill of Hermitage by a crusader chevalier-turned-vigneron, Henri-Gaspard de Stérimberg; it was acquired in 1919 by the Jaboulet family, whose company had been created in 1834. (It was purchased by the Frey family in 2006.) The magnificent, multifaceted terroirs here have soils dating back some 200 million years, to the Secondary Era, and most of the biodynamically cultivated vines are between 60 and 100 years old. As a company, Penfolds is almost as old, dating its establishment to the purchase of what is now Magill Estate in Adelaide, South Australia, by Dr Christopher Penfold in 1844. The first (experimental) vintage of Grange, created by visionary winemaker Max Schubert, was 1951, and some of the Barossa Valley fruit used for it today is from some of the world’s oldest vines.
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“Who would have thought?”
The marriage negotiations that would eventually give rise to the new wonder child were initiated by Peter Gago. His brilliantly creative mind (he had been a chemistry and math teacher before switching to wine and graduating top of his class at Roseworthy) had already come up with several highly innovative wines. To take only a few of the most striking examples: blends of different vintages of Grange (the G series) and different vintages of the top white wine, Bin 144 Yattarna Chardonnay (V); and cross-continent blends of Australian and Bordeaux wines (Penfolds II Cabernet Sauvignon), as well as of Australian and California wines (Bin 149 Cabernet Sauvignon, “Wine of the World”). Even so, the idea of blending Australia’s most iconic wine with one of France’s, was daringly imaginative and inevitably, if not intentionally, provocative. “Who would have thought?” as he himself asked at the launch and in the press release. To which the answer is clearly, Only he.
Caroline Frey admitted candidly and modestly that it would never have been she. “As a vine grower, as a winemaker […] I would never even have dared to imagine it. No one in the world has ever blended two such legendary terroirs. It’s like Picasso and Dalí painting on the same canvas—an idea so extraordinary, it almost feels too incredible to be real.” And yet when, in the course of their friendship, Peter popped the question, she was probably far more receptive to it than many producers of such a famous French wine would be. As a graduate of the enology faculty at the Unversity of Bordeaux who worked closely with Denis Dubourdieu as a consultant, she holds impeccable credentials as a fully qualified winemaker—and she had many years of experience at Château La Lagune before making the wine at Jaboulet as well from 2006. (She also makes wine in Burgundy and the Valais.) But she is not from a French winemaking family—rather, from a Swiss family of financiers—which may have made her more open to novel ideas. And she had already revealed a willingness to challenge convention and experiment with new ideas through some of her own wines—most notably and significantly Duo, a 50/50 blend of Château La Lagune and Hermitage La Chapelle, which she describes as her homage to the older tradition of Bordeaux Hermitagé, of which she has made one barrel every year since 2006. (The magnum of 2007 Duo that she served for Peter Gago, some of his Penfolds colleagues, and a few fortunate wine writers at a lunch at Vineum—Jaboulet’s wine bar in Tain l’Hermitage—in February, shortly before the launch of the 2021 Grange La Chapelle in Paris, was beautifully balanced and elegant, with a fresh and flourishing finish; an experimental wine, perhaps, but a very successful one.)
Grange La Chapelle: “A blend waiting to happen”
While the whole idea of Grange La Chapelle may seem very radical in some ways, however, in other ways, as Gago was excited to explain, it seems “fated,” even “natural,” “truly a blend waiting to happen.” How so? With evangelistic fervor, Gago recounts several prophetic signs of the new wine’s birth: a major Hermitage La Chapelle and Grange tasting organized by the Institute of Masters of Wine many years ago; more recently, in 1987, a Hermitage Luncheon at Rakel Restaurant in New York (with a young Thomas Keller as the chef), co-hosted by Gerard Jaboulet, who poured the 1978 Hermitage La Chapelle, and Max Schubert, who served the 1971 Grange (which he singled out as being his ideal vintage; see Huon Hook, WFW 8, pp.50–51); and even a bestselling book by Michel Dovaz, Fine Wines: Best Vintages Since 1900
(Assouline, 2009), where 1961 is represented by Hermitage La Chapelle, and 1962, by Grange. And Grange was, of course, labeled as nothing other than “Grange Hermitage” from the 1950s all the way through to 1989 (Bin 95 Grange tout court from 1990).
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Gago was always convinced that the best Penfolds parent wine would be Grange—partly because of all the above associations, and partly because committing the most famous Penfolds wine would be the clearest, if also the riskiest, statement of complete conviction—even if Penfolds RWT Bin 798 might have seemed a contender, since it is matured, like Hermitage La Chapelle, in French rather than American oak. Nevertheless, he wanted to convince the Penfolds team, as well as the Frey team, by staging a tasting of blends using other Penfolds wines. And if he was convinced before the tasting that Grange would be best, he was still more so afterward—as they all were. As he says, “When things are real, all quickly becomes self-evident.”
Gago and Frey were equally sure that a 50/50 blend of the two wines would be best—symbolically, in terms of an equal partnership, but also in terms of taste—which also proved to be the case, and which will be the rule from now on. Because the inaugural 2021 vintage is no one-off—not a Penfolds Special Bin, which might be a one-off—but is the first in what is intended to be a long line of annual releases, “Mother Nature permitting.” The 2022 is already in bottle, and the 2023 blended in barrel.
Birth and early life of Grange La Chapelle
However “natural” the marriage, though, the wine’s actual birth inevitably required some intervention from the midwives, because the logistical and practical challenges were considerable. For a start, the two parents—one from the southern hemisphere, one from the northern—were on the scene some six months apart. And the birth needed to be in Australia, because legally it could not be in France. (The wine has on the back label, “Wine of France 50%. Wine of Australia 50%.”)
Gago and Frey were both keen that the birth happen as soon as possible— but it would still need to be after the Hermitage La Chapelle had been through its malolactic. It was then air-freighted in barrel to Australia, to reduce the risks as far as possible, all the while being very carefully controlled and monitored for oxygen levels and temperature, with which Penfolds’ experience of other cross-continental blends proved beneficial.
After the blending, the new wine went back into oak; the time it will spend there will vary with the vintage, but Gago supposes it will normally be between six and nine months. Half of the blend went into American oak that had already been “seasoned” with other Penfolds wine that year, so not completely new, and the other half of the blend into French oak, 15% of which had been seasoned in the same way. The Grange had already been in 100% new American oak, and the La Chapelle in 15% new French oak, so Gago reckons that the overall proportion of new wood is around 70%.
There was then the crucial question of how long the new wine should spend in wood, Gago being convinced that “the bottling date is as important as the picking date.” He therefore sent samples back to the Frey team so that they could decide together. Once the date had been settled, the wine was not fined but went through what Gago calls a very light “sticks and stones” filtration, before being bottled under cork and spending more time in bottle prior to release. (This period may also vary, but Gago thinks it will normally be between 12 and 18 months.)
A challenge of a different kind had been keeping the marriage and birth a carefully guarded secret over several years, throughout the very detailed and protracted discussions between the two companies, involving the marketing, PR, and sales teams, as well as all of the winemakers. A few wine writers were let in on the secret and had an opportunity to meet the new baby in London in October 2024, during tastings for the ninth edition of Penfolds’ The Rewards of Patience. The official presentation was at a very spectacular dinner at La Monnaie de Paris on February 9, 2025. After the embargo was finally lifted, one of the articles to break the news was written by WFW columnist Nick Ryan, senior wine writer for The Australian, where the story made the front page under the headline, “Like a Beatles–Stones album, this wine marriage is made in heaven.” (paywall)
Welcoming the wonder child
Both of the parent companies were always aware that not everybody would welcome the new baby into the world so warmly. Frey accepted before the launch that “we will attract some criticism—every good new idea is criticized by some people. But I’m not afraid of that. I would be far more worried if we didn’t attract any criticism, which would suggest that the idea isn’t as original, as unique, as we believe it is.”
And sure enough, some responded to the news by questioning the wine’s raison d’être (if not quite its right to exist). One UK wine writer (and doubtless others) asked on social media, “Why?” To which an obvious answer (and there are other much more positive ones) would be, “Why not?” After all, it’s not as if either parent wine will be diminished in anything other than quantity, unlike some new special cuvées, where an existing wine is compromised or sacrificed by having its heart and soul—be that derived from a particular lieu-dit or an old-vine parcel—removed. As with all blends—including Grange and Hermitage La Chapelle (the latter mainly now from lieux-dits Le Méal, Les Bessards, and Les Rocoules)—it may well be that the best perspective from which to view the new wine is not that of terroir, even though terroir operates on different levels, and nobody who has been on the great Hill of Hermitage will question the role of terroir there.
There are, however, other equally valid perspectives, and Gago and Frey always had a very clear idea of what they were. The wine was always envisaged as a celebration of a grape variety and a style, rather than of a particular place or producer. As Gago puts it in the press release, “The blend’s raison d’être [is] one variety—reunited, reinterpreted, reassembled. Via one variety, this wine fuses two hemispheres and two winemaking cultures: France and South Australia, Syrah and Shiraz, La Chapelle and Grange.” Gago and Frey both felt that Cabernet Sauvignon has held the center-stage for rather too long and wanted to give Syrah/Shiraz a share of the limelight. (Grange normally has a little Cabernet, usually less than 8%.)
And of course they wanted to produce a great new wine with its own distinct identity. Inevitably, some of those fortunate enough to spend time with the new baby will not be able to resist the temptation to try to see which features come from which parent. At the launch dinner, one Australian wine writer admitted to being baffled, even frustrated, in her attempt to discern which qualities came from the Grange and which from the Hermitage La Chapelle; while some in the French press are quite sure that the Australian parent brings less to the marriage and its offspring than the French: muscle and richness, for which it gets in return the higher virtues of elegance, freshness, and finesse.
While Gago recognizes this temptation, he hopes that most of those who drink the wine will resist it—not least because he doubts it’s possible in taste terms. He would be the first to accept that the child has the DNA of both parents and that their personalities and qualities are vital. But he would also insist that they combine in complex ways to create a quite distinct individual. He points out that a parent with black hair and a parent with red hair may produce a blond child and that it is impossible to see the primary colors in all the others to which they give rise. He suspects that the tannins of the two parent wines combine to form quite different tannins; and the structure and texture of the new wine were the features that Frey singled out when I tasted it with the two of them in London. “There is a completely different texture and weight in the mouth,” she marveled. “I was afraid the wine might become hard, but in fact it has become very silky, in a quite distinct, even unique way.”
This is the alchemy, the astonishing transformation wrought in all successful blends, and a large part of their rationale. Even those blending components whose origins are much closer together—in the same single vineyard, like Jacques Devauges at Clos des Lambrays in Morey St-Denis, rather than multiple vineyards thousands of miles apart—testify to the blend being so much more than the sum of its parts. What we have in Grange La Chapelle is one plus one equaling one—but a different one. Or one plus one equaling three great wines. Even more than the distinct personality, it is the perfect harmony and sheer quality of the new wine that provide the best answer to the question “why?”
Tasting
2021 Grange La Chapelle (14% ABV)
Tasted twice: in London on October 1, 2024, and
in Paris on February 9, 2025.
A deep purple-ruby to a thin, vibrant, crimson rim; opaque but not saturated, bright and shining. A captivating nose on both occasions, a fabulous aromatic weave; very elegant, fine, fresh, and focused, but effortless and floating, with graceful lift, the detail and intricacy already starting to show within the overall subtlety. Dark-fruited, with pure blackcurrant, blackberry, and mulberry, but neither raw nor roasted; beautifully integrated oak, barely perceptible as such, but perhaps contributing the light sandalwood and soft spice waft. With air, the spectrum widens, revealing more of the base notes, clean earth, licorice, even light resin (not eucalyptus), and more of the floral/mineral top notes (violets). Disarmingly silky entry, with exceptionally fine, chalk-dusty, gently supportive tannins; medium-bodied, perfectly paced, with a controlled energy and fluency. Almost racy; sleek, with great harmony, transparency, and vibrancy, remaining succulent throughout the elegant, persistent finish, which glides on and on. Although clearly very different, not only in terms of maturity, this was fully worthy of standing on the same table as the 1990 and 1978 La Chapelle, and the 1990 and 1971 Grange, which were also served at the launch dinner. 2030–50+. | 96–97
RRP of 75cl bottle is A$3,500 / €2,600; available in most key markets through appointed Penfolds agents or through grangexlachapelle.com
