Stephen Pannell’s Many-Splendoured Grenache
“The perfume is alluring. The wine is not about weight. There’s a lightness of touch on the palate that makes you think and engage with it. Making those wines that are contradictory, that’s the hardest thing to do.”
Stephen Pannell is talking about Nebbiolo—except we’re really talking about Grenache. And, as he’s wont to do, he’s hit the nail on the head on how to transcend the latter’s perceived limitations. Love, after all, is a many-splendoured thing. Is Grenache?
Pannell’s certainly got his eye in on the subject, having just completed a week-long Grenache crusade alongside fellow McLaren Vale luminaries Pete Fraser of Yangarra and Willunga 100’s David Gleave MW.
Grenaissance, a multi-city masterclass series for the trade, coincided with the release of Pannell’s 2022 single-site Grenaches. It’s now a sensational suite of three wines, with the inaugural bottling of Little Branch (Blewitt Springs) joining Smart (Clarendon, first made in 2017) and Old McDonald (S.C. Pannell’s original single-vineyard wine).
It’s exactly 10 years since Pannell won Best Other Red at the Halliday Wine Companion Awards for his 2012 Grenache. On that occasion, he and I spoke about what it might take for Grenache to shuffle out of the ‘Best Other’ shadows and into the limelight.
“Grenache takes a bit more nous and work and guile to get it where you want it to be, and that challenged me," he told me in 2014. Back then, as now, he saw tannins as holding the key. This presented a problem. Winemakers were generally pumping out soft, juicy Grenache, both cause and effect of Australian drinkers conditioned to enjoy fruit-centric, rather than structure-driven, reds.
Conversely, those tannins—a tricky thing to get right—explained his attachment to the grape. “I love the gritty, sandy tannins in Grenache, the savoury fruit and aromatic punch, what I see as a kind of musk and rosewater lift, in a light- to medium-bodied wine,” he said at the time. “That’s why I dig it.”
In the meantime, Pannell has put his money where his mouth is with Nebbiolo and Grenache. In 2019, he and his wife Fiona purchased Kenton Valley Vineyard (rechristened Protero) in the Adelaide Hills to explore the potential of five different Nebbiolo clones. They followed this up with the 2021 acquisition of a prized Grenache site, now named Little Branch, in the heart of Blewitt Springs.
Interestingly, Pannell feels he cracked the winemaking code back with his 2010 Grenache, which won the Melbourne Royal Wine Awards trophy for Best Other Red Varietal (that also-ran ‘other’ tag again). Since then, the approach in the cellar has stayed the same. Instead, the emphasis has shifted to growing the wine, teasing out site signature and tension. This quest goes to the heart of the world’s great wines and is the priority if Australia is to definitively prove its worth to a global audience.
On this point, even two-time Jimmy Watson-winner Pannell, who’s bagged trophies for just about every black grape under the South Australian sun, has continued to learn.
For one thing, that same sun presents its own challenges for a thin-skinned grape susceptible to sunburn and low acidities. “To avoid making the wine sweet is very hard,” says Pannell. “One of the problems with Grenache is we say it likes a warm climate, and that’s not exactly right; it’s probably truer to say it’s drought tolerant, especially in sandy soils, but it performs well in the cooler years. We’ve been lucky with three La Niña years in a row with 2021, ’22 and ’23. In 2022, we had the lowest pHs.”
He credits a cutting-edge destemmer, introduced in 2021, with increasing the wines’ definition and freshness by excluding overripe berries. But the most telling factor has been his faith in his picking decisions. It’s a well-worn truth that if you wait for Pinot Noir to be ‘ready’ before you pick it, you’ve missed the boat. Pannell feels the same about Grenache.
“We had a look at some of the top Châteaneuf-du-Papes recently—Clos des Papes, [Château] Rayas and all those—and a lot were coming in at 15%,” he says. “You could easily go too far backwards, but there’s a happy medium, and I definitely have greater confidence when picking. 2022 Smart was 13.2% when I picked it.”
For the farming and harvesting to be deemed a success, one supposes it must fit with Pannell’s three-pronged mission: to have Grenache taken seriously as a top-flight wine; to have McLaren Vale and its specific sites considered its sacred home; and to produce medium-bodied wines with tannin and tension.
“The thing about those great wines in Europe is that you don’t have such sweet fruit, and you have tannin,” says Pannell. “Oak and oxygen accentuate sweetness, which is why I make these wines reductively. And if you’ve got sweetness, tannin is the number one thing to balance that sweetness.”
This takes us back to the parallel with Nebbiolo. “Structure is the content; it’s the reason for being,” says Pannell. “We talk about fruit flavours and aromas with red wines, but when you think about Nebbiolo, there’s a varietal nature to the tannins. It’s the same with Grenache.”
One of the delights of tasting around the crus of Barolo or Barbaresco is the textural journey it entails. Beyond the beguiling aromas, there is a tactile landscape to explore, and you surrender the senses with the best wines.
Pannell likewise sees Grenache as “a magnifying glass for a sense of place”. What’s more, submitting to those shifts of light and shade, quiet and loud or rough and smooth, leads to a more profound and enduring affection. “Like music, it’s a personal thing,” says Pannell. “It’s an emotive connection, and building up that connection is important. You develop a fondness for the wines.”
Even with Yangarra and Willunga 100 at his side, Pannell confesses that bearing the torch for Aussie Grenache has been a lonely place at times. Recent years have seen the emergence of several fellow evangelists taking up the flame with wines of unmistakable quality—Thistledown, Vanguardist, MMAD, Alkina, Bondar and Bulman, to name but a few. And Pannell found the trade encouragingly engaged during the Grenaissance roadshow.
“There have been a lot of times when you bang your head against a brick wall and think, ‘Am I ever going to get there?’ he says. “It’s early days still. We’re preaching to the converted; the question is, how do we take that to the general public? We need to get the wines onto the list and then get people to buy them.”
For Pannell’s money, Australia could rule the Grenache world. His latest releases present a strong case—and suggest it’s far from a hollow crown.
The Wines
2022 S.C. Pannell Smart Vineyard Grenache McLaren Vale RRP $85
Stephen’s notes: From the famed Smart Vineyard, Clarendon. 67-year-old unirrigated bush vines grown on 750-million-year-old soils comprising laminated dark and green siltstone at 230m above sea level and farmed by Wayne Smart. Hand harvested on 16th March and immediately crushed. Fermented with 20% whole bunches in one stainless-steel open-top fermenter with regular pumpovers. Left on skins for 10 days before a gentle press. Settled in tank for 24 days before transfer to an old French oak vat for malolactic conversion and extended maturation. Racked twice and bottled without fining, filtration, additions or adjustment on 6th September 2023. Alcohol 14% alcohol; pH 3.23; TA 7.1g/L; total sulphur 53ppm.
My tasting: The light vibrant purple colour presages an explosively bright, exotic nose with higher tones of pink and blue fruit and orange blossoms. Beneath than run maraschino, rhubarb, alpine herbs and graphite. The slew of red berries on the palate is cooled by pepper and herbs. Transparent, zesty and bouncy, it’s held by the grit and grip of silty tannins, with the acidity pushing through with ruby grapefruit, musk and floral echoes on the finish. This is charismatic Grenache with athletic shape and balance.
2022 S.C. Pannell Old McDonald Grenache McLaren Vale RRP $85
Stephen’s notes: Plaisted's Vineyard, McLaren Vale. 80-year-old 'bush on a wire', dry-grown on 50-million-year-old soils comprised of Maslin Beach sand at an altitude of 80m above sea level and farmed by Matt Hatwell. Hand harvested on 1st March and delicately crushed. Fermented with 20% whole bunches in one stainless-steel open-top fermenter with regular pumpovers. Left on skins for 15 days before a gentle press. Settled in tank for 15 days before transfer to an old French oak vat for malolactic conversion and extended maturation. Racked twice and bottled without fining, additions or adjustment on 8th February 2023. Alcohol 14%; pH 3.37; TA 6 g/L; total sulphur 56ppm.
My tasting: The most grounded of the trio on the nose—always almost as though Old McDonald refuses to strut its aromatic stuff; it opts for the measured takeover. Scents of raspberry, plum, glossy dark cherries, smoky herbs, aniseed, sweet spices and cherry pie. It immediately has intensity and evenness on the palate; sage, seaweed and ginger joining the fray with the rush of blueberry and cherry. The tannins are superb, with the channel, directionality and authority of Cabernet Sauvignon, yet with fine pumice-stone texture and cranberry-inflection that is very Grenache. A cherry kernel twist to finish, straight and very long. Commanding wine, plush and pleasurable with it.
2022 S.C. Pannell Little Branch Grenache McLaren Vale RRP $85
Stephen's notes: Our first red wine harvest and ferment from the Little Branch Vineyard, Blewitt Springs. 30-year-old unirrigated trellised vines grown on 50-million-year-old soils comprised of Maslin Beach Sands flecked with ironstone at 140m above sea level. Purchased in 2021. Picked on 16th March and immediately crushed. Carefully fermented in stainless steel with a small percentage of whole bunches. Left on skins for 13 days before pressing. Settled in tank for 16 days before transfer to old French oak vats for malolactic conversion and extended maturation. Bottled without fining, on 16th August 2023. Alcohol 14.5%; pH 3.39; TA 6.2 g/L; total sulphur 53ppm.
My tasting: The nose shows pretty, vaporous lift—vinous, unconfected—with Cabernet Franc-like notes of dark slate and raspberries and Nebbiolo echoes of strawberries, roses, maraschino and orange peel, with kirsch, cardamom, peanut shell and herbs in the mix. It’s more grounded on the palate, with powerful draw from its dense web of shale-like tannins. Lithe and poised. Salty plums and a touch of iron chime in. Glimpses of laciness and fine threads of flavour but also densely, magnetically charged. The finish has an indelible but airy imprint of Italianate aromas and tannins. Something really going on here.
