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Tasting notes
Penfolds’ top Cabernet Sauvignon, Bin 707 combines fruit (in 2021) from Coonawarra, the Barossa Valley and Wrattonbully, with the wine spending 16 months in 100% new American hogshead prior to bottling. The oak currently dominates the nose, with freshly shaved coconut and sweet vanilla, but beneath that is a wine of immense concentration, structure and depth. The fruit is dense, almost impenetrable, yet there’s also a plushness; creating a wine of both power and elegance. It builds towards a long-lasting, savoury, smoky finish.
Critic scores
Average Score
Jancis Robinson MW
Jane Anson, Inside Bordeaux
More reviews and scores
Beautiful fragrance, this curls seductively out of the glass, still primary character to the fruit with its violet, peony and greengage plum aromatics. Violets carry through on the palate, along with blueberry, raspberry, sweet pureed cassis, vibrant and sculputed character, totally knockout. Great stuff, chiselled and ready to age, this is a great wine. Can't wait to taste it in the future. Unfined and unfiltered, just racking every few months during ageing, Peter Gago chief winemaker. More than 50% sourced from Coonawarra fruit.
Just love this wine, so bedded down and young, but clear in its potential. It takes the heart of Cabernet Sauvignon and distils it, intensifies it, wraps up the mint leaf and the liqourice and lifts it on a bed of measured acidity and pure cassis. Fine tannins - there are tons of them but you rarely feel them. Unfined and unfiltered. A vintage with tiny berries and thick skins, so they took cut down on maceration time to keep the emphasis on this purity of expression. There was no Bin 707 or 169 in 2020 because of wildfires, so this is the first in two years. 100% new American oak, barrel fermented. Peter Gago chief winemaker.
The 2021 Cabernet Sauvignon Bin 707 hails from Coonawarra, Barossa Valley and Wrattonbully and is matured for 16 months in American oak hogsheads (100% new). On the nose, the wine is aromatically reticent, but in the mouth, the tannins (then fruit) hit with full force. This is a powerful wine that, to be honest, I find little joy in on release. The firm caveat I would assert at this stage is that old Bin 707—we are talking 20 or 30 years old—is a graceful, powerful, exciting wine. And 2021 was a gorgeous vintage: long, cool and even in the growing season, so the wines produced in this year (from South Australia particularly) are elegant and composed. The fruit here speaks of its vintage origins; however, the oak remains a big part of the story at this early stage. The "plus" part of the score is a very loud indicator of its future potential. 14.5% alcohol, sealed under natural cork.
About the producer
Penfolds is Australia’s most famous wine producer, known best for their iconic top wine, Grange. First produced commercially in 1952, Grange has since gone on to become one of the world’s most famous fine wines. In 2001, the wine was listed as an Australian heritage icon.