Penfolds Magill Estate Shiraz 1.5L MAGNUM 2005 CONFIRM 2005 VINTAGE

Penfolds Magill Estate Shiraz 1.5L MAGNUM 2005 - Buy
Shiraz Adelaide Hills South Australia
The Magill Estate style has evolved over the years. While the early vintages were quite lean and tight, the recent releases have shown much greater fruit definition and palate vitality. The winemakers paid particular attention to flavour development and tannin ripeness for this Magill, and this release triumphs in a show of supple structures and more fruit richness. The aim of Penfolds Senior Winemaker Peter Gago in crafting Magill is to create a wine which expressess the character of the vineyard, and is more elegant in style than most Penfolds reds.
The wine of this vintage is a reminder of the unique micro-climate of the Magill Estate Vineyard. The cooling gully winds, sloping site and unique aspect that results from being totally surrounded by residential housing allowed the deep rooted dry grown old vines of the Magill Estate Vineyard to thrive. Hand-picked from Blocks 1, 2 and 3 of the Magill Estate Vineyard, vinified in open fermenters and then basket pressed. The small batches of wine were kept separate throughout fermentation and after pressing into barrel. Magill Estate Shiraz was treated to fourteen months maturation in a combination of mostly new French and American oak hogsheads. Alcohol 14.4%
A deep, dark-red sheen/gloss. Barrel-ferment elements of cola, sarsaparilla and char alongside black olive, soy, sage and leather notes. The palate is focused with the flavours and textures true to style. Tannins are firm and obvious - tight and chalky, not expansive and coarse. Oak is integrated - the cedar, vanillins and citrus notes are possibly illustrative of both French and American oak origins.
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Penfolds
Penfolds was founded by a young English doctor who migrated to one of his country's most distant colonies a century and a half ago

Dr Christopher Rawson Penfold was born in 1811, the youngest of 11 children. He studied medicine at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London, graduating in 1838. Like many doctors before and since, Dr Penfold had a firm belief in the medicinal value of wine. Before he left Britain he had obtained vine cuttings from the south of France and these were planted around the site of the modest stone cottage he built with his wife, Mary, at Magill on the outskirts of Adelaide in 1845. The couple called this house The Grange, after Mary's home in England.

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Dr Penfold built up his medical practice and made fortified wines - port and sherry - for his patients. As the demand for their wine grew, the Penfolds expanded the vineyards and increased production.

Following Dr Penfold's death in 1870, the vineyards and winery continued to be very capably run by Mary Penfold, who had been fundamental in their establishment and development from the very beginning. The scale of Mary's success some 35 years after the company's small beginnings, is indicated by records showing that 107,000 gallons (close to 500,000 litres) of wine were stored at Magill in 1881. This quantity was said to represent one-third of all wine stored in South Australia at the time. By the turn of the century, the area under vine at Magill had grown to 50 ha (120 acres) and Penfolds was fast becoming a household name.

As well as the Magill vineyard surrounding the original winery, there are Penfolds vineyards in the Barossa Valley, home of the world renowned Kalimna and Koonunga Hill vineyards. Vineyards are also owned in the Clare Valley, the Eden Valley (higher up and adjacent to the Barossa), McLaren Vale just south of Adelaide, and in Padthaway and Coonawarra in the far south-east of the state. Grapes are also purchased under long-term contracts from all premium areas in South Australia. Additionally the company has developed vineyards and growers in the emerging premium wine regions of Robe and Bordertown.

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The Magill Vineyard is Penfolds spiritual home, the site where Penfolds Wines was founded in 1844. Since the 1970s the land has been subject to the pressures of urban development and today just 5.2 ha (12.5 acres) of Shiraz vines remain, surrounding the Grange cottage. The grapes are used to produce Magill Estate Shiraz, the only wine still produced at the historic Magill winery.

The soil is fertile red-brown earth and the climate is generally warm. The oldest vines were planted in 1951 and the most recent in 1985. On average the Magill Vineyard yields about 40 tonnes of grapes. Kalimna is mostly planted to Shiraz and Cabernet, and produces the base, or motherwine, for Grange. The vineyard is located at the northern end of the Barossa, 4km (2.5 miles) north of Nuriootpa. The mature parts of the Kalimna vineyard were planted in the 1940s and 1950s.

There are gnarled, century-old Cabernet vines on the Golf Course Block - also called Block 42 - that sprawl, untrellised, over the ground and provide high-intensity fruit for Bin 707. In 1973 a 30ha block 5km north-east of Kalimna in the Barossa Valley, was selected and purchased by then Penfolds Chief Winemaker Max Schubert. It was planted two-thirds to Shiraz and one-third to Cabernet Sauvignon. The Koonunga Hill vineyard contributes to Penfolds red wines such as Grange, Bin 707 Cabernet Sauvignon, Bin 389 Cabernet, Shiraz, St Henri Shiraz and Kalimna Bin 28 Shiraz. Average yield is between four and six tonnes per hectare or about 1.5 to 2.5 tons per acre.

Penfolds invested in the Clare region, about 130km (80 miles) north of Adelaide, in the-late 1970s, at the recommendation of Max Schubert. The vineyards are now established and contribute to a number of premium wines, including the Penfolds Organic red wine. In Max Schubert, Don Ditter, John Duval and Peter Gago, Penfolds have nurtured four of Australia's great winemakers, who have passed the baton of responsibility for crafting Australia's most famous wines down through the past five decades.

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