Penfolds
RWT (now Bin 798)
Barossa Valley
1998

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 which were ground-breaking. So much so that the Grange project, started in 1951, was officially shelved until several years later, although the wines were made and stored in secret until it was officially re-instated in 1960.

Around 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 shiraz styles.

There are many choices in the Penfolds Barossa Valley range but we have selected three outstanding wines - Magill Estate Shiraz, Bin 150 Marananga Shiraz and Bin 798 Shiraz (previously RWT).

The wine

Penfolds Bin 798 Shiraz was first released in 1997 under the RWT (Red Winemaking Trials) label, and now labelled RWT Bin 798, is a blend of Syrah from several Barossa vineyards. This instils the richness of texture and opulent fruit that is spiced by French rather than the signature American oak. Where many Penfolds reds show some brawn and power, Bin 798 shows richness and fleshiness.

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.