Penfolds – St Henri Shiraz 2021

St Henri is Penfolds' great counterpoint to Grange, a Shiraz from the Barossa Valley and McLaren Vale that spends its maturation not in new but exclusively in large, used oak barrels, for twelve months, without the vanilla polish of young wood. The name has been around since the 1950s, with roots reaching back to a claret from 1888. At around a hundred euros, it is the affordable classic alongside the many times more expensive Grange, and the critics unanimously celebrate the 2021 with 96, 97 points, while the estate credits it with the potential to mature until 2045.

I tasted it this evening alongside two further Syrahs from the 2021 vintage, one Cretan and one from the Peloponnese, and it came into the glass a touch too warm, so that at first the nose barely rose above a plain red-wine aroma. At the right temperature, though, the dark berries and plum emerge, liquorice and dark chocolate over that graphite-and-iron minerality one likes to call ironstone in this wine. On the palate there is no doubt as to which is the most powerful here, plenty of blueberry, berried through and through, dense and almost opaque, the most jammy of the three. The lovely thing is its tannin, which works in several layers, decidedly gripping and somewhat coarser, but beneath that a very fine grain that fills every gap. Where the Cretan Nostos comes across as finer and more herbal, and the Peloponnesian Lacules more elegant, this one moves in all directions at once, round but never tame, with an invigorating, long finish.

For me these are 97 points. Shiraz doesn't get much better than this, and on top of that the value for money is simply outstanding.