This winemaker has the art of the grenache refined to a tee

It’s the pick of the perfumed reds for anyone who knows anything about wines.

Stephen Pannell at S.C.PANNELL 'Little Branch' Vineyard, in Blewitt Springs. Photo: Supplied

Spend a few minutes talking to anyone who knows about wine and you’ll be told that grenache is “so hot right now”. It’s true. We are living in the Golden Age of Australian grenache.

But the man who has done more than just about anyone to get us there reckons winemakers need to do more. “We’ve seduced everyone with fragrance, but the key to ­really great grenache is tannin and the tension that brings,” says Steve Pannell on the release of three ­single-vineyard wines he reckons are the best he’s ever made. He’s right on both counts.

Grenache will always deliver fragrance, ­although it can be spread across a range that ­extends from Cary Grant and a delicate spray of Penhaligon’s to randy teenager getting ready for a date with a can of Lynx. The wines that ­really express the profound beauty of this ­variety, however, anchor that aromatic flightiness to a bedrock of structural grit. And the key to that is serious work in the vineyard.

Bush vines are a good start. No variety is diminished by the rigour of trellising quite like grenache, but as Pannell has learned over many years, it’s the fine art of achieving ­evenness of setup and yield within the reasonably random nature of a bush vine vineyard that’s really required. While two of the wines in this release come from vineyards he’s worked with for some time, the third, Little Branch, comes from a 9ha vineyard in the ­Blewitt Springs sub-region he and his wife Fiona purchased in 2021.

­Previously set up to the standards of a ­different winemaking approach, the vineyard required a great deal of hands-on work to come into the kind of balance that Pannell felt would deliver the inherent tannin tension he was looking for.

That work has paid off in spades. These are wines with both treble and bass.

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S.C. Pannell Wines. Photo: Supplied

S.C. PANNELL ‘SMART VINEYARD’ GRENACHE 2022

$85

The Smart vineyard is in a slightly more elevated site in Clarendon, in the Adelaide Hills, that consistently delivers grenache with tightly pulled focus. This is the coiled and wound one, the stand-offish and reserved one. It’s grenache with a nebbiolo fetish. Dark raspberry fruit, pippy and fresh. Purity and precision.

14% abv, 97 points

S.C. PANNELL ‘LITTLE BRANCH VINEYARD’ GRENACHE 2022

$85

The effusive one, the fragrant one, the one that gesticulates with a flourish. Dark cherries, raspberries and rabarbaro liqueur, some rubbed rosemary grip. It’s supple but fine-grained in texture, with the finest, high-definition tannins –immeasurable pixels fanning out to wide-screen finish.

14% abv, 95 points

S.C. PANNELL ‘OLD MCDONALD VINEYARD’ GRENACHE 2022

$85

The darker one, the broody one, the one that reads Camus and smokes French durries. It’s layered, reserved, a slow reveal. Raspberries, some blackcurrant, a char siu meatiness, a compote core wrapped up tight in tannins. This is the one to spend time with – and allow it time to reveal itself.

14% abv, 95 points