Skip to main content

What’s top Down Under?

By August 14, 2009Fine Wine Market

Grange_wideweb__470x307,0 (1)

Wine Ark, the Sydney-based wine storage facility, has released a list of Australia's 50 "most collected wines" with Penfolds Grange, predictably, taking the top spot.

The list is compiled from the stocks held by Wine Ark, which claims to store more than 3 million bottles of wine on behalf of 8,500 private clients. The "most collected" white wine was Leeuwin Art Series Chardonnay.

“We store more than 25,000 bottles of Grange in our cellars alone,” said Wine Ark Managing Director Dean Taylor. “This is a significant portion of our overall collection, which has a conservative value of around $250 million. The most expensive wine we’re currently cellaring is a 1951 Penfolds Bin 1 Grange Shiraz, worth around $50,000."

The list highlights quite how important Penfold's is to the Australian fine wine industry, with eight different bottlings in the top 50, five of which actually make the top 10.

The top 10 according to Wine Ark are:

1. Penfolds Grange
2. Penfolds Bin 398
3. Lake's Folly Cabernet
4. Penfolds St Henri
5. Moss Wood Cabernet
6. Wynn's Cabernet
7. Cullen Diana Madeline
8. Rockford Shiraz
9. Penfolds Bin 707
10. Penfolds Bin 28

So how does this compare with the Australian wine traded on Liv-ex? The list below is worked out by adding up the total number of cases traded on Liv-ex. The figure in brackets is the wine's position on the Ark List.

Five Penfolds wines also make the top ten here (although the five are not the same). It is also interesting to note the strength of D'Arenberg, Parker Estate and Henschke, all of which have traditionally had a strong following in the UK.

1. Penfolds Grange (1)
2. D'Arenberg Dead Arm (15)
3. Henschke Hill of Grace (33)
4. Parker Estate First Growth (42)
5. Penfolds Bin 707 (9)
6. D'Arenberg Custodian Grenache (NA)
7. Penfolds Yattarna Chardonnay (NA)
8. Henschke Keyneton Estate (NA)
9. Penfolds Bin 407 (17)
10. Penfolds RWT Shiraz (18)