The long-standing friendship between Caroline Frey, Chief Winemaker and Vigneronne, La Chapelle and Peter Gago, Chief Winemaker, Penfolds, catalysed the creation of Grange La Chapelle
Australia’s Penfolds Grange and France’s Hermitage La Chapelle have come together to create Grange La Chapelle, a top Shiraz wine that is rewriting the rules of the fine wine world, says LUX Editor-in-Chief Darius Sanai
We live in an era of luxury collaborations. Whether it’s Fendi and Versace, Louis Vuitton and Yayoi Kusama, or LUX and artists like Jeff Koons and George Condo, working together is the new chic.
Follow LUX on Instagram: @luxthemagazine
And why not? It brings great minds, and creativity, together rather than working in parallel and competition.
In the wine world, there have also been collaborations, albeit in a rather different way. Famously, Château Mouton-Rothschild commissions celebrated artists to create its labels – its collaborators include the likes of Picasso and Francis Bacon.
Caroline Frey and Peter Gago tasting their new wine
And over the last decades, great wine estates have worked together to create new wineries, most notably Opus One, created by the same Rothschilds and California’s Robert Mondavi.
But, nobody has ever created an actual wine that is a physical collaboration between two celebrated wines. Until now.
Read more: Coralie de Fontenay on women luxury entrepreneurs
Grange La Chapelle, announced this week, is a collaboration between the most celebrated wine of Australia, Penfolds Grange, and one of the most historically notable wines of France, Hermitage La Chapelle.
When we say collaboration, we don’t mean that the two companies worked together to create something new and put a label on it.
A bottle of Grange La Chapelle 2021
No, Grange La Chapelle is literally a blend of Penfolds Grange and Hermitage La Chapelle, 50-50, to create a groundbreaking, unique and completely new concept in the world of luxury wine.
For wine connoisseurs, it’s like Ferrari and Aston Martin coming together to create a new car. And there is method in the creativity: both Grange and La Chapelle are, famously, made from the Syrah grape, which is called Shiraz in Australia. Both are showcase examples of it: Grange is widely considered the best New World Shiraz, beloved of collectors, and has a shout at being known as the best Shiraz/Syrah in the world, full stop.
Hermitage La Chapelle, meanwhile, has a storied history, being produced as one of the standout wines of the great Hermitage area south of Lyon (all made from Shiraz) throughout the 20th century. Indeed, before Grange gained global fame in the 1980s and 90s, Hermitage La Chapelle would have been many people’s choice as the greatest Syrah (Shiraz) in the world.
‘As the project progressed, I saw the elegance in Grange and the strength in La Chapelle’ – Caroline Frey
And now, they are together. LUX has not yet had the pleasure of tasting the new wine, but can imagine the producers are spot on when they say that it is “bold, yet elegant, structured and expressive”.
Read more: Meet the next generation philanthropists
Peter Gago, Chief Winemaker, Penfolds, comments that “this friendship created and idea, this idea became a trial, and the trial became a wine. Who would have thought…”
Caroline Frey of La Chapelle notes that “as the project progressed, I saw the elegance in Grange and the strength in La Chapelle” – encompassing the general view that the Australian wine is more powerful than the French – although, connoisseurs would say, it has always been every bit as complex.
Frey and Gago at Château La Lagune
Grange La Chapelle is about much more than an exciting and delicious new wine for collectors to get their hands on: it is a rewiring of the circuit diagram that underpins the wine world, which previously stated that you simply didn’t create a blend of different estates’ wines from different continents. Penfolds has form here, previously creating flagship wines itself from France and Australia and creating fine wines from three continents: Australasia, Europe and North America.
And why not? If Fendi and Versace can do it, so can Penfolds Grange and Hermitage La Chapelle. Now you know what to serve at your next dinner, and you can be sure your guests, however wine educated, will never have tried it before.
Recent Comments