Grenache – from boom to bust and back to boom again
How much do you know about Grenache?
If the answer is ‘not much’ you needn’t worry, for this varietal has had a rather turbulent relationship with Australian wine drinkers. Once a leader of the industry, this grape fell into slight obscurity in the 20th century and it has taken many years to recover. In recent decades it has seen a slight return to favour as a component of Australia’s famous GSMs (where it is blended with Shiraz and Mourvèdre), but it is really only over the past few years that this varietal has started to enjoy a bit more of the limelight. Yes, the re-birth has commenced, but we believe that there’s a lot more love soon to be heading Grenache’s way. More and more winemakers are exploring its capabilities, and some are proudly reporting levels of complexity in line with Pinot Noir.
But before we get ahead of ourselves…
While it is widely accepted that Grenache’s ancestral home is in Spain (though they call it Garnacha over there), France would rightly argue to be its spiritual. You will find it in vineyards right across Languedoc and the southern Rhône Valley, but you’ll pretty much never find it bottled as a single varietal. In France, it is almost always blended and is probably most famous as one of the primary grapes of Châteauneuf-du-Pape. It is in this French tradition of blending that Australian Grenache pursuits have followed.
The story goes that during exhaustive travels in the early 19th century, a man named James Busby was working his way through the vineyards of Spain and southern France collecting cuttings. He packaged and sent hundreds of them to Australia in 1832, before immigrating himself. 363 specimens survived and they were planted in Sydney’s Botanic Gardens; Grenache being one of them. Through the decades that followed, the varietal made its way to South Australia where it was noted to be growing much better than any other and it was suggested that this was due to the comparable Mediterranean climate.
It was not, however, just the climate that aided Grenache’s development. This varietal is a notorious workhorse and grows impressively in warm, dry conditions as an un-trellised ‘bush vine’. Even during hot summers, this thin-skinned grape often retains good levels of acidity. It thrived as a generous supplier of fortified wine, which was the zeitgeist of the Australian wine industry up until the 1960s, and as tastes turned to table wine Grenache was left in a sort of odd position.
Powerful dry red wines were beginning to redefine Australia’s wine-scape and soon cool-climate regions were also starting to pique the public’s interest. 1979 saw 72,000 tonnes of Grenache harvested, but by 2012 only 15,000 tonnes were taken. In 2017 it accounted for just 1% of all vines across Australia as growers had been planting more and more of nearly every other varietal except Grenache.
Thankfully the re-awakening has commenced, and Grenache is starting to enjoy more time in the sun. With its thin skin and aromatic nature, there are often parallels drawn with Pinot Noir and this comparison is a just one. When treated with respect, producers are able to craft light-coloured and perfumed single varietals, that persist with a length of complex flavour that is backed up by structure and finesse.
Grenache’s renewed popularity also coincides with, and is intrinsically linked to, a global shift towards red wines at the lighter end of the spectrum. The youthful, expressive and pretty characters that were once the cause of its unpopularity, are now exactly what the public are demanding. We’re confident that we’re going to see more and more of this complex varietal as winemakers explore the full spectrum of what its capable of – and we can’t wait to taste the results.