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2021 Grange La Chapelle: Syrah/Shiraz wonder child
Neil Beckett greets the remarkable offspring of two legendary parent wines from opposite sides of the world, which seems at once almost unimaginable and written in the stars
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
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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
58 | THE WORLD OF FINE WINE | ISSUE 87 | 2025
rigin, identity, individuality, quality—all are crucial questions for fine wine. And they are
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.
”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.)
”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
Opposite: Caroline Frey and Peter Gago on the Hill of Hermitage with their new wine.
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