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$170K for Australian Wine?

  • Spence Cooper
  • July 3, 2012

Penfolds Winery in South Australia has been producing wines since 1844, and is known for its Grange wines, the most famous wines in Australia.

Penfolds was founded by Christopher Rawson Penfold, an English physician who emigrated to Australia.

Penfolds operates a number of vineyards in the Adelaide region, produces many different grape varieties, and is one of Australia’s oldest wineries with an extensive product range.

The preeminent winery recently unveiled 12 bottles for sale of a rare vintage listed at $170,350 each. The wine, a 2004 Kalimna Block 42 Cabernet Sauvignon, is a rare single-vineyard wine which is only released in stellar vintages, and can only be opened by a specially-trained wine expert.

The wine is held in a unique hand-blown glass “ampoule”designed to provide an optimal environment, and is suspended inside a custom-made glass container which sits inside a wooden cabinet.

“It is our understanding this is one of the most expensive Australian wines released in this unique format,”said Penfolds spokeswoman Ildi Ireland.

In order to open and enjoy the vintage, a prospective buyer will have to summons a senior member of Penfolds’ wine-making team, who is the only person with the correct training to uncork the bottle.

This expertly trained sommelier will travel to wherever the customer is to remove the ampoule from its glass casing and open the bottle using a specially-designed device.

“The wine contained within the ampoule, first released in the 1950s, holds a particular significance among generations of Australian and international wine collectors,”Penfolds said in a statement.

Penfolds claims the Block 42 vineyard, planted in the mid-1880s, is in South Australia’s Barossa Valley and is believed to have some of the oldest continuously-producing Cabernet Sauvignon vines in the world.

0K for Australian Wine?“There is something really magical about the 2004 Block 42 Kalimna Cabernet,”said Penfolds chief winemaker Peter Gago.

“It has an ethereal dimension and a saturated blackness on the palate, it’s extraordinarily perfumed with layer upon layer of flavor”

Agence France-Presse notes that four artisans were commissioned to produce the ampoule and casings which feature fixtures made from precious metals that help anchor the glass sculpture to the jarrah wood box.

One of the ampoules will remain at Penfolds’ Magill Estate Winery in South Australia, and one will be kept by luxury retailer DFS and feature at the Master of Spirits event in Singapore early in the New Year, Penfolds said.

NOTE – You can find a regular bottle of this wine for under $700 USD (if you can afford that “bargain”, count yourself lucky!

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