The Magill Estate, South Australia, home of Penfolds since 1844

One of the world’s great red wines comes, unusually, not from a hallowed single piece of land, but from an ever-varying blend of vineyards in South Australia. Penfolds Bin 707 has risen meteorically into the consciousness of wine collectors in the last couple of decades, renowned for its silken balance and depth. Darius Sanai meets Penfolds Senior Winemaker Steph Dutton over a tasting of vintages ranging from 1990 to 2021 to discover insights into a wine every connoisseur should be considering for their cellar, dining table – and home cinema

Wine connoisseurs seeking the world’s great Cabernet Sauvignons typically have two broad styles to explore. There are the old-world wines of Bordeaux, including great names like Chateau Lafite and Chateau Mouton-Rothschild, Cabernet-dominated red wine blends that are complex, often austere, and reserved; and the more exuberant, rich, sweeter style of Napa Valley Cabernet from California. To these (very broad generalisations), we can add a third: Bin 707, a Cabernet Sauvignon made in South Australia by the celebrated wine brand, Penfolds.

Bin 707 is distinctive as, like many Penfolds wines from Australia and elsewhere, it is not sourced from a particular estate or plot of land: instead, each year, the winemakers choose what they think are the greatest Cabernet Sauvignon grapes from around the region, that will work best in harmony with each other, and blend them to make Bin 707. (And in years when the grapes are not deemed good enough, the wine is not made at all).

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The wine has a typical Penfolds high-end class and style: immensely smooth, refined, sophisticated and balanced, without being overwhelming with any single element: neither too rich, nor austere, nor over fruity, nor bitingly tannic. And like all the world’s great wines, Bin 707s develop with age, adding layers and subtlety while retaining their essential character and soul.

But how do you create such a distinctive wine? Darius Sanai organised a conversation and tasting, over Zoom, with Steph Dutton, Penfolds winemaker, to find out more. Dutton outlines in her own words some background behind what is becoming one of the world’s legendary Cabernets; and as they taste through vintages, both Dutton and Sanai give their thoughts on each.

Steph Dutton conducted our tasting from the tasting room at Penfolds celebrated Magill estate in Australia

Steph Dutton, Penfolds Senior Winemaker, on Bin 707:

“Bin 707 has always led the charge for Cabernet, which here in Australia was a variety that took longer to find its feet compared to Shiraz. Yet Cabernet is still king in the fine wine world in terms of its nobility, its ageability, and this ability for Cabernet to tell a very long-lived story.

Bin 707 is now attaining a real cult following that has previously always been attached to Grange (Penfolds’ famous Shiraz). Our job as winemakers with a wine like Bin 707, which has been around since its inaugural release in 1964, is to honour the style that our predecessors have already carved out, but we should also still be making the 1% and 2% changes every year in the right direction in the name of excellence.

Whether it’s Grange or Bin 707 , the rule about selecting the fruit to go in the wine is that it doesn’t matter where it comes from, as long as it’s the best. And so as you go through warm vintages, cool vintages, and everything in between, the different regions are going to be represented at different percentages. It’s the best of the best from each vintage.”

Bin 707 has a distinctive and balanced style of its own, appealing to collectors of Cabernet Sauvignon around the world

Penfolds Bin 707 1990

Steph Dutton: 1990 is probably one of the most famous vintages in South Australia, so it was sort of the logical place to begin today. I will always be fascinated to know what the 1990 was like at the time, as I can’t time travel and go back and know what it looked like during vintage. With this wine, I like to say you can be the most intense voice in the room, but it doesn’t mean you’re the loudest voice in the room. And I think as wines age, the best examples do keep their intensity, but they become a little bit more subtle and less obvious. It’s almost like the components are retreating into themselves a little bit more, but they’re resolved.

Read more: Bettina Bryant on California’s Bryant Estate

Darius Sanai: Amazing nose, palette of colours, I want to have a Bistecca alla Fiorentina done medium. It’s got that wonderful structure to it, and I want rosemary on the steak. It’s not powerful, but it’s still full, not faded at all. If I had a case of this, I would last it out for another 20 years.

Penfolds publishes a guide to how each vintage of all of its great wines is maturing

Penfolds Bin 707 1998

SD: This is a big vintage in proportions. It is full of tannin and muscle. It should be incredibly fruit sweet. This is going to be one of your more obvious wines in the line-up. Looking at my own tasting notes, I speak about muscle, the grunt, the sinew, grainier tannins. I’ve spoken about a warmth that comes with the wine, you know, that chocolatey blackberry sort of warmth and comfort, sort of a generosity.

DS: Plenty of everything here, still incredibly refined though. Not overwhelming like some Napa Cabernets are, for example. There is plenty of fruit and tannin, but also a balance and smoothness, nothing jumps out at you too much, and it is incredibly fresh and moreish also. Just delicious. It also feels ageless: this is a wine that is 26 years old, but it could be 16 years old or six years old, with that layered balance. I would say that extra power in this one along with that freshness would make it match nicely with a chicken tajine, not too spicy, but with a little turmeric and allspice.

Penfolds Bin 707 2004

SD: This is a more elegant wine, like the 1990, while the 1998 is moodier and broodier. 2004 is a cooler climate vintage and we source fruit from different areas, depending on the vintage. The art of multi-regional blending gives you, a different skill set, but also something different that you’re offering your collectors and your loyalists. It’s a little bit like thinking of a choir with many voices, all singing together at one point in time, versus a solo artist. And our job as winemakers is probably, we don’t want to lose the solo artist in a choir, but we want the power and magic of the choir when it’s the best fit.

And so our job as winemakers is not only knowing when and how to blend, but also knowing when not to blend.

DS: Same style, like a sibling, very refined. Its layering is subtle but still distinctive. And it doesn’t taste anything remotely like 20 years old. I have had 2004 Bordeaux first growths that look and taste distinctly older than this.

SD: In the wine world, it’s a little bit like the real world. If you’re mistaken for a younger version, it’s the biggest compliment, because it means you’ve got a longer life ahead of you with wine. So to hear it looks more youthful than what it is, it’s the best thing you can say to a winemaker!

LUX tasted through six vintages of Penfolds Bin 707 at a country house in England’s Cotswolds, while speaking to Steph Dutton in South Australia

Penfolds Bin 707 2006

SD: This wine is more like a 10-year-old rather than a 20-year-old. It was from a drought year, but drought doesn’t mean it was hot, it just means it was dry. The wine is very tightly wound in the best kind of way. There’s a lot of untapped potential here being revealed.

DS: It has that youthful mouthpuckering tang but still that distinctive Bin 707 deliciousness.

SD: It has what I call that upfront fruit vibrancy and density. I think dried and cured meats with a vintage like this are lovely but also not overpowering. You know, when you think about bresaola as an example, or jamon iberico. If you go to a restaurant, bresaola is one of the best matches for aged cabernet that you can come across.

Penfolds Bin 707 2010

SD: 2010 was an incredibly strong vintage. It wasn’t the biggest of anything, but it was kind of the best of everything. Proportioned, rather than big.

DS: There are many, many layers here, but typical of this wine, it’s all very subtle and silky. It doesn’t demand your attention, like some famous Cabernets. If you wanted to, you could whiz through a bottle while watching Netflix with a sourdough pizza with nduja – there’s plenty of structure to match that spice – or you could sit with a fellow connoisseur and analyse it over water biscuits. It’s fascinating to have that dual character; with other great wines you tend to only be able to do one of those.

Penfolds Bin 707 2021

SD: Like 2010, 2021 was a fantastic vintage. You can taste that it is primary, bright, glossy, full of juiciness, very firm tannins. It’s like a little glimpse of a wine that’s in its infancy.

DS: That is the expert winemaker perspective… for me, it is dangerously drinkable now in 2024, considering that it will probably age as well as the 1990. There’s nothing forbidding about it, although it is certainly full of bright, rich colours. It’s one you could drink with a filet mignon, or sauteed chanterelle mushrooms on toast, and that would bring it out even more. But like all the others. it’s perfectly balanced, there’s nothing showy or overblown about it. You could drink it every day, as well as at Christmas.

www.penfolds.com

There is a vineyard in the heart of Napa Valley that is a legend among wine cognoscenti; and one wine estate above all others that is celebrated for the wines it makes from it. Darius Sanai embarks on a tasting of Schrader’s celebrated To Kalon vineyard Cabernet Sauvignons

Schrader’s wines come from the heart of the Napa Valley in California

Anyone who enjoys the world’s great wines will have been asked a variation of the following question by a friend or acquaintance who is not a wine drinker: why are they worth it?

Top wines cost hundreds or even thousands of pounds/euros/dollars a bottle. What is it about a liquid, opened and dispatched over the course of a couple of hours, that is so much better than other bottles of very similar liquid, on sale for a fraction of the price?

My favourite answer is that a great wine makes you think. It carves its own conversation and memory in your mind. It has a depth and breadth of complexity which starts, like any foodstuff, with your sensory organs (smell, taste, sight, touch), but which then transfers into your brain to engrave itself on your experience.

Great food also has sensory complexity (and can also be expensive and confined to the very wealthy). But wine has two qualities which are unavailable to food: a bottle of wine accompanies you and your companions during the course of a part of a day (rather than as a course in a meal), taking part and assisting in numerous conversations. And a great wine evolves, and has a different conversation with you over the space of a couple of hours. The greatest wines leave a city’s worth of impressions on your mind.

I was thinking of this during our tasting of Schrader Cellars wines. Schrader is one of the big names of Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon: if you are a hedge fund titan in New York, an oil magnate in Dallas or an entertainment investor in LA, you will likely know the winery.

Jason Smith, Master Sommelier at Schrader

The first three wines we tried – three of the winery’s flagships – were all from a legendary piece of land, the Beckstoffer To Kalon vineyard in Napa Valley.

Drive by Beckstoffer To Kalon on Highway 29, the main road bisecting the valley, and you would be forgiven for missing it. Unlike some of the spectacular vineyards of the region, perched amid hillside forests or on mountainsides, To Kalon is flat, on the valley floor, just an array of vines. But then, so are vineyards like those around Chateau Latour or Chateau Petrus or Chateau Cheval Blanc in Bordeaux. Visual appeal has no relationship to vineyard quality.

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Like a Burgundy vineyard, To Kalon has a number of different wine estates making wines from its esteemed grapes; Schrader is probably the most celebrated. But what makes Schrader, as well as this vineyard site of To Kalon, so special?

The To Kalon vineyard is on the valley floor of Napa, touted by forested mountains

Jason Smith, the urbane, cosmopolitan General Manager of Schrader, with whom we had our tasting, is too modest to give a direct answer: it’s a combination of the vines and the winemaking. Smith is a rarity in that he is a Master Sommelier running a prestigious winery; and as such has real insider knowledge of the fabulous restaurants which manage to get their hands on a small stock of Schrader wines. He says the wines are best drunk over dinner with a small group of friends; although the wines weave such a conversation we would be happy to drink them alone.

Tasting notes by Darius Sanai

Schrader Cellars Heritage Clone 2019

So many layers wash over your senses when you sip this wine: as soon as you think you have separated and worked out the different elements, more arrive to replace them. If it were an artwork, it would be a late-period Rembrandt: on first note, a portrait of a person, then you notice the eyes, the unfinished sleeve, the posture; keep looking, and keep sipping, and more nuances appear and others disappear. Unlike a Rembrandt, this will improve over time: its conversation will be even more fascinating in 2029 or later.

Schrader Cellars CCS 2019

The To Kalon vineyard is cooled by breezes and fogs coming in from nearby San Francisco Bay

Schrader is very scientific over which parts of the To Kalon vineyard make which of its wines. CCS is made from grapes from nearest the centre of Napa Valley itself, near the river. The soil is full of mineral deposits, which apparently make the wine balanced, lifted. My impression was of a wave of blues, greens, greys and reds; its conversation was playful yet intellectual, never too heavy, but always very precise. It reminded me of a Chagall; not one of his sadder paintings, but a more joyful work, figures flying, but always with a poignant poetry behind it. Again, I would keep my next bottle for a few years, as this conversation developed as the evening went on.

Schrader Cellars RBS 2019

For me, the most famous of Schrader’s wines and the only one I had tried before, in various different vintages. This is not a wine that hides its qualities behind its coat. It is made from the warmest part of the vineyard, and Napa does get very hot in summer, although To Kalon is mitigated by both the fact that it is near the cooling effect of the Bay, and that the valley floor has cooling fogs flowing in from the Bay and the Pacific, which can also keep sunshine off. So with the richness comes a balance. Still, this is a showcase wine with power and wow factor: a Damien Hirst sculpture of a wine, a showcase. I would drink this anytime from now, but ensure Alain Ducasse was around in my kitchen to cook up a tenderloin with foie gras or alternatively a morel mushroom casserole with plenty of truffle and parsley, to accompany it.

Read more: A tasting of Vérité wines with Hélène Sellian

Double Diamond Cabernet Sauvignon 2019

The wine made for people who can’t afford or don’t want to broach the fabulously expensive wines above, I expected Double Diamond to be a bit of a disappointment, like the second wines of top Bordeaux chateaux are sometimes. But hell no. Although it’s made from 100% Cabernet Sauvignon, like all the wines here, Double Diamond is sourced from outside To Kalon (but within Napa Valley), and it’s altogether a different conversation. Open, delicious, very sophisticated in its own right, perhaps less demanding of your attention and conversation than the artworks above, which require the limelight; ready to drink now and not really needing a food accompaniment. A mid-career contemporary artist, perhaps Flora Yuhnkovich, enjoying their success.

Find out more: schradercellars.com

In the second part of our luxury travel views column from the Autumn/Winter 2022 issue, LUX’s Editor-in-Chief Darius Sanai checks in at the Four Seasons Napa Valley in California

Autumn and winter are fine times to visit Napa Valley. The sun shines, the crowds aren’t here and nor is the summer heat that increasingly hits Napa, one of the most verdant and spiritual areas of the US. It is also source of some of the world’s greatest wines, thanks to its location on the West Coast, influenced by the cool waters of the Pacific and the semi-desert heat inland. 

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Mention of a Four Seasons resort conjures up visions of palatial buildings and good old-fashioned luxe. Not here. You could quite easily drive past the Four Seasons Napa Valley without noticing it, which is the intention. The resort is situated in a working organic vineyard just outside the northern spa town of Calistoga, and is surrounded by an amphitheatre of hillsides. 

The wooden buildings are environmentally integrated low-rises, biophilic by design, so that nature is incorporated, not counteracted. A series of swimming pools at the centre faces the hills and the sound of piano sonatas lap across the water. Napa Valley has a light that is as famous in California as that of Provence in Europe. Here, it is luminous, reflecting from the pools to the sky. 

The hotel is located at the northern end of the Silverado Trail, the winding road that lines the eastern side of Napa Valley. The great wine estates of the valley are all a short scenic drive, or a longer but more satisfying bike ride, away. 

True to the laid-back style of both resort and region, the main restaurant, Calistoga’s Living Room at Truss, and its terrace with a view, is a no-tablecloths kind of place, although Four Seasons regulars may feel it’s trying a bit too hard to be cool. You can try the resort’s own wine, a powerful Cabernet Sauvignon that shows it is made here, in the hottest part of the valley. 

Our favourite dining spot – in fact, one of the best dining places in a region famed for its cuisine – was Campo Poolside, the restaurant by the pools. A chicken superfood salad with balsamic vinaigrette had textures and flavours that were crisp, powerful, biting and vivid – perfect Californian lunchtime food. Campo describes itself as Cal-Mexican but, in reality, it serves food that tastes as light as the views. 

Our room was effectively the top floor of a wooden chalet, with a balcony overlooking the mountains beyond and the vineyards below (we said hello every morning to the gentleman pruning the vines). It had the feel of being your own residence in the vines (the room had its own entrance and staircase); clever and distinctive. 

Read more: Hotel of the Month: The Lygon Arms, the Cotswolds

The resort, with its extended grounds, is very open and outdoors-based, with pathways to walk on or to ride around on in a buggy. It’s great in perfect weather, exposed in the rain. But it doesn’t rain much in Napa, especially these days. 

Find out more: fourseasons.com/napavalley 

This article first appeared in the Autumn/Winter 2022/23 issue of LUX

Left to right: Naoko and Maya Dalla Valle

We taste some of the most admired vintages of Napa Valley, through the decades, with two generations of the owning family of the Dalla Valle estate, Naoko and Maya

Naoko and Maya Dalla Valle make some of the most magical wines in the world. From their vineyards in Rutherford, in California’s Napa Valley, the mother-and-daughter proprietors of the eponymous winery create red wines which combine perfume, subtlety, style and power, that have become cult acquisitions for collectors. They also score high in the increasingly important sustainability stakes, as all the estate’s vines are farmed organically.

Dalla Valle was started by Naoko and her husband Gustav in 1986; it shot onto the wine world map in the early 1990s, when Robert Parker, the super-critic and then the man who could make or break a high-end winery, gave a perfect 100/100 score to their flagship wine, Maya.

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As well as being their most prized wine, made from their best vineyards, Maya was their daughter, then a baby. Thirty years later, Maya is the winemaker and increasingly active in running the estate. Parker no longer makes or breaks a wine’s image, but standards are still the same. The Dalla Valle wines, made of Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc, come from vineyards on the Rutherford Bench, just above the valley floor of Napa and home to what wine enthusiasts would call some of the best “terroir” in the region, which now produces some of the world’s most expensive wines.

The two wines we tasted on our Zoom tasting and chat are celebrated for an elegance, complexity and sophistication that is not always found in the great (in every sense) wines of the Napa Valley. Below are short extracts of our conversation, and our tasting notes.

LUX: Can you go back in time and tell us about making your first wines?
Naoko Dalla Valle: We created the Cabernet Sauvignon in 1986 commercially. Then 1987, we purchased more land from the neighbour and we planted additional about five acres of Cabernet sauvignon. And that turned out to be the best vineyard on the property and then we combined with that highest quality of the Cabernet franc we produced, and decided to create this special wine called Maya. People think she is named after wine, she came first! We immediately got noticed by Robert Parker and we immediately started getting very high scores and then by 1990, we got 99 points. For the 1992 vintage, we received 100 points from Robert Parker, we were the second winery in America to receive that score. That put us on the map. We have been fortunate to be able to maintain the quality.
Maya Dalla Valle: I would also point out the fact that, my father unfortunately passed away in winter, December 1995. So shortly after we had learnt about this 92 vintage Maya, so it was also a very sentimental moment but also for my father, he passed knowing that we were going to be ok. I am first generation American, both my parents came from different countries [Japan and Italy]. My mother had the choice to sell the winery and go back to Japan to work. We had family there, she could have easily have done that, but she had grown a fondness and a deep love for our property and the vineyard and land and winemaking, that she really took this business to next level.

LUX: What makes your terrain special?
Maya Dalla Valle: We are on the east side of Napa Valley, and it is about 500 feet elevation at the peak. What’s interesting is that this little bench that we sit on is a result of a landslide that occurred four million years ago, from volcanic origin, so we have volcanic iron rich bedrock soil… things are constantly moving. We often see these small boulders pop up in the vineyard each year through the surface. It makes us wonder sometimes if we are farming rocks or farming grapes.

Maya Dalla Valle and her corgis

LUX: You represent a generational change of winemaker. Has there been a generational change of consumer preferences?
Maya Dalla Valle: The younger consumer is not the same kind of buyer as the previous generation. They seek more authenticity and are able to connect with your brand. Then they become more loyal. You need to show them what you are doing in a way they can feel like they connect with you. We talk a lot about our sustainability, we are organic, we did organic certification for our vineyard to show accountability of what we do.

The tasting: (notes by Darius Sanai)

Dalla Valle Maya 1990
Scents of black olive, truffles, perfume top notes, a wine you could wear to the ball at the Chateau de Versailles. At the same time it is rich and dense, but not at all heavy, on the palate. Tastes develop in the mouth for a long time. One of the great wines of the world today, at 32 years old, but I would like to try it again when it is 64. The star of the show.

Dalla Valle Cabernet Sauvignon 1992
Very deep, layered wine, stratified, almost. Lots of muscle, black fruits and herbs. One for Kobe beef, simply grilled, on a Friday evening alone.

Dalla Valle Maya 2010
Like a young Russian prince wearing a cloak. Beautiful but quite closed to start with; opened up after half an hour of conversation, to reveal a complex, surprisingly delicate personality.

Dalla Valle Vineyard

Dalla Valle Cabernet Sauvignon 2010
Quite different to the Maya, remarkable that it is grown from land so nearby. Full and rich, black fruits and mountain herbs, and a zinginess that makes it quite distinctive. To share with an old friend, in your mountainside ranch in Wyoming.

Read more: Luxury Travel Views: Royal Champagne Hotel & Spa, Épernay

Dalla Valle Maya 2018
Expected this to be very closed, as it’s so young, but this is like walking into a jewellery shop, with a multitude of colours of flavour. Dazzling stuff, and you would drink it while celebrating your latest deal, but with a hint of guilt, because it will plainly be so much better in decades.

Dalla Valle Cabernet Sauvignon 2018
A rich Napa cabernet, meaning power and weight, and also with a lightness, meaning people who prefer elegant wines will also enjoy it immensely, particularly over a meal of grilled miso vegetables on the terrace of your Umbrian palazzo on a coolish May evening.

Find out more: dallavallevineyards.com