Collector brings sixty-year-old Grange to Penfolds Beijing clinic

Penfolds Grange from the 1950s and a 70-year-old Port were among the rare bottles to emerge from collectors’ cellars at the first Penfolds re-corking clinic to be held in Beijing.

More than 150 people attended the Beijing clinic at the China World Summit Wing Hotel. It was hosted by Penfolds’ chief winemaker, Peter Gago, and came one year after a similar event in Shanghai.

The Penfolds team has assessed 120,000 bottles since it began running re-corking clinics worldwide in 1991, as a way of offering collectors ‘health checks’ on wines more than 15 years old.

‘Given the increasing awareness and appreciation for fine wine in China, it is important for us to host the clinic [here] to help Chinese consumers look after their Penfolds collections and share with them the re-corking experience,’ a spokesperson for Penfolds told DecanterChina.com.

The Beijing event saw rare Grange vintages dating from the early 1950s to the 1990s, including a 1955 bottle that the winery believes is ‘the oldest vintage of Grange opened and re-corked in China’. Other notable wines at the event included two bottles of the 1971 Grange, which Penfolds said were in ‘excellent condition’, as well as a 1945 Grandfather Port.

The Penfolds team also offered advice to collectors about long-term cellaring and drinking windows.

‘Via these Clinics, we can also confirm that even in climates with extreme temperatures such as Beijing, our wines can be still be kept perfectly sound, and will cellar well when stored in the right conditions,’ said Gago.

DecanterChina.com understands that Penfolds plans to bring the clinic back to Asia next summer, and that Hong Kong is currently the likely destination.

Penfolds owner Treasury Wine Estates announced last month that it would bring forward the release of its 2010 vintage Penfolds Luxury & Icon wines to October this year. Releases have previously taken place in May, but the new schedule means the range will be 'more readily available in the lead-up to key festive periods including Chinese New Year’, said the firm, which is under pressure from shareholders to improve sales and profits.