High up in the picturesque Blewitt Springs subregion of McLaren Vale GI, South Australia, stately old bush vines stand sentinel. Small and gnarled, some are over 100 years old. Their very existence is testament to their resilience, not only to the warm, dry Mediterranean climate that is their home, but also to the vagaries of fashion. Once the most widely planted variety in the region, Grenache was later dismissed as a grape suited only to the production of fortified or bulk wine. But its fortunes have reversed, as demand for serious Grenache from McLaren Vale has risen in recent years. After more than 60 years of neglect, Grenache’s potential as a fine wine is finally being realized.
The story of Grenache in Australia is intrinsically linked to the history of fortified wine production in the country. The first cuttings of Grenache arrived in South Australia in the 1830s. Grenache was well suited to the South Australian climate, and the variety soon became highly prized by early settlers for its dual ability to achieve high ripeness levels and crop at high volumes. As a result, Grenache was an important grape in the initial two waves of Australian exports, featuring first as a component in the robust, high-alcohol GSM (Grenache, Syrah, and Mourvèdre) table wines that could withstand the long journey to the UK, and later, in the early 20th century, as a key variety for fortified wine.
The strong market for Australian fortified wine in the UK ensured that Grenache was the most widely planted variety in McLaren Vale well into the 1960s. But the advent of the table wine boom in the late 1960s ended Grenache’s good fortune. Considered a weed by many in the industry because of its tendency to produce large volumes of pale-colored wines, Grenache was included in the Australian government’s vine-pull scheme of the 1980s. In 1986, McLaren Vale lost 310 hectares of mostly old
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