Australia

When Joseph Rowe Osborn purchased the established Milton vineyards in 1912 they were already planted to Grenache, Shiraz and Mourvedre, varieties that have continued to play a pivotal role in McLaren Vale to this day.

Grenache has been the foundation of all of d’Arenberg’s red wines since the construction of the cellars in 1927. This variety has been notable for its lack of popularity in Australia from these earlier days, partly due to the residual prejudice against it as the main ingredient in the fortified wines (which is what the Australian consumer drank until preferences changed and Cabernet and Shiraz became more significant), and because unless well-managed in the vineyard, the resulting wines can tend towards light and confectionary type characters.

Chester had a fairly innovative way of securing supply of old vine Grenache from some of the local growers. In 1993 he advertised that he would pay double the market rate per tonne for dryland, small berry Grenache and 20 or 30 small growers responded. Most of them had been selling their fruit to the backyard market and their crops ranged from 0.5 tonnes to 3 tonnes per acre. It was (and is) exceptional fruit, very low yielding and still complements the Osborn vineyard material to make up the Custodian Grenache to this day.

While other winemaking techniques and varieties came and went, d’Arenberg ignored the vagaries of fashion, and now the oldest Grenache vines at d’Arenberg are approaching their 120th season, and are thick trunked, dry grown and deep rooted, struggling to produce modest quantities of small, highly flavoured grapes.

As the champion of the variety in McLaren Vale, we proudly see ourselves as the custodian of Grenache, and it is fitting that we have vinified and bottled the Custodian separately, as a tribute to the Osborn’s enduring faith in the variety. d’Arenberg continues to reap the benefits of having this marvellous cache of old bush vines with which to make the Custodian each year.

As with all of our d’Arenberg reds, the Custodian undergoes the same gentle processing using the Demoisy crusher, fermentation in the concrete and stainless steel open fermenters, where the grape skins are submerged in the fermenting juice by foot treading. Gentle pressing through our 19th century ‘Coq’ and ‘Bromley and Tregoning’ basket presses is followed by approximately 12 months in some new, but mainly older American and French barriques.

Tasting Notes

Available at major supermarkets while stocks last.

Information by darenberg.com.au