Penfolds
Bin 389 Cabernet Shiraz
South Australia
2004

The producer

Penfolds history is much more than the story of Grange. In 1844 Dr Christopher and Mary Penfold planted vine cuttings they had brought from Europe at Magill Estate in South Australia. Through innovation and hard work, Penfolds was South Australia’s largest winery by the early twentieth century so winemaker Max Schubert walked into a successful operation in 1948. His experiments with different blends of wines and the use of American oak led to the creation of wines were ground-breaking. So much so that the Grange project started in 1951 was officially shelved several years later, although wines were made and stored in secret until it was officially re-instated in 1960.

Near the same time the “Bin” concept started. Simply named after their storage bin, wines of different source and blend were given bin numbers on release. Some of these became continual releases to this day, others had short runs or were only released in exceptional years. Several of these individual Bin wines – such as 60A, 620, 42, etc. – are now wines of legendary status.

Some of the greatest red wines of the 1950s and 60s in Australia were made by blending wines from different areas to create a consistent style. Penfolds has continued this with many of their range … rich, sumptuous wines mostly with the spicing of American oak.  Penfolds has evolved its styles over the years and now produce an exemplary range of blended and specific regional (South Australian) shiraz styles. There are many choices in the range but we have selected three outstanding wines - Grange Bin 95, St Henri Shiraz and Ben 389 Cabernet-Shiraz.

The wine

Bin 389 was first made in 1960 by the legendary Penfold’s winemaker Max Schubert and was the wine that forged Penfold’s initial fame as a red wine specialist. A blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, which gives structure, and Shiraz, which lends richness, Bin 389 is often referred to as ‘Baby Grange’ because components of the wine are matured in the same barrels that was used for previous vintages of Grange. Grapes are sourced from the wine regions of McLaren Vale, Barossa Valley, Padthaway, and Wrattonbully, and the wine is left to mature for 12 months in American hogsheads.

Bin 389 is a full bodied wine with enormous density of fruit, rich aromatic complexity, and all balanced by fine suave tannins and crisp acidity. 

We choose our wines based on a range of criteria (see how we choose our wines) of which critic scores is just one. Rather than simply highlight the best score to promote a wine, our average critic score is calculated from the scores provided by several respected wine critics, who we follow for specific regions. They do not represent all critic scores and, wherever possible, we try and give more weight to more recent reviews. Where appropriate we consider market-based scores like Global Wine Score or Wine Searcher Average scores.

As a rule, we look to offer wines that achieve a 92/100 average critic score or better and frankly a lot of very good wines simply don’t make the cut. As a high-end provider we want to reflect that positioning in the quality of wines we offer. Such wines are only a tiny fraction of those generally on offer in the market. We believe that an average score is a more conservative and representative approach, but it is still subjective and only offered as a guide to our customers, who will (and should) do their own research. We will add individual critic scores to our website in the future.