Penfolds Releases Grange 2022 as Its Flagship Turns 75

The new Grange combines Shiraz from three South Australian regions, holds its Australian price at A$1,000 and extends a wine identity built on selection and blending rather than a single vineyard.

What happened

Penfolds released the 2022 vintage of Grange on August 6 as the flagship of its 2026 collection and as the bottle marking 75 years since Max Schubert made the first experimental vintage in 1951.

The 2022 wine is a blend of 97 percent Shiraz and 3 percent Cabernet Sauvignon. Penfolds sourced the fruit from Barossa Valley, McLaren Vale and Coonawarra, with 85 percent of the Shiraz component coming from Barossa Valley.

In Australia, the recommended retail price remains A$1,000 per 750 millilitres. This is the fifth consecutive Grange release at that nominal price. Penfolds has also scheduled the wine for professional distribution through the La Place de Bordeaux network from September 8.

What is Grange?

Grange is Penfolds' flagship Australian red wine. It is usually built predominantly from Shiraz, with a small proportion of Cabernet Sauvignon in many vintages. Its identity does not depend on one estate vineyard, one district or a fixed parcel.

The winemaking team selects fruit across regions and blends it to preserve a recognisable house style. Penfolds describes that style through fully ripe Shiraz, concentrated fruit, developed tannin, American oak and the capacity for long bottle ageing. Partial barrel fermentation and approximately 18 to 20 months in oak are recurring parts of the method.

This makes Grange unusual within fine wine. Many European reference wines derive status from a legally delimited place. Grange derives continuity from selection, blending and a defined stylistic objective. The regions and proportions can change, but the intended identity remains.

Max Schubert made the first experimental wine in 1951 after studying winemaking in Europe and visiting Bordeaux. He wanted to create an Australian red capable of developing for at least 20 years. The project was initially rejected by Penfolds management, but Schubert continued making it. The anniversary counts from that experiment, not from 75 years of commercial releases.

What is confirmed

The composition, source regions, release date and Australian recommended retail price are documented across Penfolds release information and Australian trade coverage.

The A$1,000 price is unchanged for a fifth release. In nominal terms this is a price freeze. In real terms, inflation has reduced the value of that price over the period.

The 2026 collection also brings the ninth edition of The Rewards of Patience, a reference guide based on tastings of Penfolds wines across vintages. Its publication gives the anniversary a documentary component beyond the new bottle itself.

Grange remains an annual vintage wine rather than a commemorative non-vintage blend. The 2022 release was made from the 2022 harvest and reaches the market roughly four years later.

What remains unknown

The public release material does not establish how many bottles of Grange 2022 were produced, how the allocation is divided among markets or how much will move through La Place de Bordeaux.

A stable recommended retail price does not establish final transaction prices. Retail discounts, currency conversion, taxes and market availability will differ among countries.

Critical scores and early tasting reports describe professional judgments, not confirmed evidence of the wine's future evolution. Longevity can be projected from history and structure, but the 2022 vintage has not yet lived through the decades expected of Grange.

It is also too early to know whether holding the price will strengthen collector demand or reflects softness in the luxury wine market. The same number can support either interpretation without sales and secondary market data.

TCJ View

The launch matters because Grange tests one of fine wine's strongest assumptions: that the highest quality must be attached to a single, delimited site.

Grange offers another model. Its place is South Australia, but its precision comes from choosing among regions and blending toward a stable identity. Barossa provides most of the Shiraz in 2022, while McLaren Vale and Coonawarra contribute to the final wine. The composition is not a compromise around missing terroir. Selection is the method by which the wine defines itself.

That does not make Grange independent of land. It makes its relationship with land selective rather than singular. The wine depends on knowing which regions and parcels can deliver the fruit, structure and balance required in each season. Continuity comes from judgment applied across changing raw material.

The price decision deserves equal precision. Five releases at A$1,000 protect a recognisable threshold and offer collectors nominal stability. They do not prove that demand is expanding. A luxury wine can maintain its list price while actual market liquidity, retail discounts and resale values tell a more complicated story.

At 75, the most important fact about Grange is not simply survival. It is that a wine created to age has also preserved a recognisable argument across generations of winemakers: quality can be built through rigorous selection, blending and time, without pretending that every great bottle must begin inside one boundary.

Sources

Penfolds: Collection 2026 and Grange 2022 release

Penfolds: history and established style of Grange

Penfolds: ninth edition of The Rewards of Patience

The Buyer: composition, regions and international release route

Campbell Mattinson: five Grange releases at A$1,000

Terre de Vins: French report on the Grange 2022 launch