Wine of the Year

2024 Wine of the Year

Yangarra Estate Vineyard Old Vine Grenache 2021 – McLaren Vale, South Australia

99 points (PD*) | Price when tasted $45

You could have blown us over with a feather. The same grape variety, from the same producer, has somehow managed to win our Wine of the Year for the second time in the space of only a few years. We taste over 8000 wines each year. When we sit down the judge the Awards, we have no idea what the wines are, from start to finish.

The chances therefore of a grenache from the same estate in McLaren Vale making it through all the various stages and discussions to come out on top, twice; well, they’re somewhere between Buckley’s and none. And yet Yangarra Estate has done just that. Its High Sands Grenache 2016 took out the Wine of the Year in 2020; this year its Old Vine Grenache 2021 has achieved the same feat. On top of that, the voting in favour of this year’s winner was emphatic.

Yangarra Estate Vineyard has won Wine of the Year with grenache for the second time since 2020.

It’s a giant killer. It’s not the top wine in Yangarra Estate’s own grenache hierarchy and yet in an independent review, against wines at all price levels, it reigned supreme. It was grown on bush vines that have been doing their thing in the Blewitt Springs subregion since they went into the ground in 1946. James Halliday, when he first put the wine near his nose, said ‘I’m gone for all money without even tasting it’. This wine has it all: scent, fruit, savouriness and structure. It is rock solid, rolled gold, quality. – Campbell Mattinson

Yangarra Estate Vineyard winemaker Peter Fraser.

“Grenache is a very transparent variety in the fact that it kind of shows the place. It also shows the touch of the winemaker,” says winemaker Peter Fraser. That means gentle handling, organically and biodynamically, of course. But it’s also about giving grenache’s fragrance, tannins, brightness and prettiness a chance to showcase themselves. 

Yangarra’s old grenache vines are planted in the fine, white sands of Blewitt Springs. “Sand seems to bring out a fragrance, a purity, a tannin expression to grenache like no other,” says Peter. 

Peter, who has worked with Yangarra's vineyard manager Michael Lane for 25 years, says Michael has an incredible eye for detail. “He sets us up for so much success from a winemaking perspective.”

“Grenache has been on a real high of recent times,” says Peter. “It was once, I suppose, the ugly duckling, and it has kept shining and shining, especially in McLaren Vale...and I think the scarcity of it [gives it] a huge future in the premium wine world.”

2024 Wine of the Year

Previous Wine of the Year recipients were Bass Phillip Reserve Pinot Noir 2010 (2014), Xanadu Stevens Road Cabernet Sauvignon 2011 (2015), Serrat Shiraz Viognier 2014 (2016), Best’s Thomson Family Shiraz 2014 (2017), Henschke Hill of Grace 2012 (2018), Duke’s Vineyard Magpie Hill Reserve Riesling 2017 (2019), Yangarra Estate Vineyard High Sands McLaren Vale Grenache 2016 (2020), Brokenwood Graveyard Vineyard Hunter Valley Shiraz 2018 (2021), Yarra Yering Dry Red No. 1 2019 (2022) and Best’s Wines Foudre Ferment Riesling (2021).

The 2024 Halliday Wine Companion is available now. Secure your copy of Australia's most comprehensive wine guide here – and at all good bookstores.

This is an edited extract from the 2024 Halliday Wine Companion, with reviews by James Halliday, Campbell Mattinson, Dave Brookes, Jane Faulkner, Jeni Port, Mike Bennie, Ned Goodwin MW, Philip Rich and Shanteh Wale. Cover art by Ka Mo.

*Panel decision – score awarded by the Halliday Tasting Team at the annual Awards judging.