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Anthony Rose looks at how Grange has fared at auction over the years
In the most recent edition of Langton's Classification of Australian Wine (2000), the Melbourne auction house puts seven Australian wines in the Exceptional category (the most highly sought after and prized Australian wines on the market), including of course Grange.
According to Langtons, 'the sheer volume of interest and level of bidding illustrate the importance of these iconic treasures'. Not surprisingly, Grange has become a collector's item with complete sets of Grange (from 1951 onwards) the highest priced lots sold at auction. In November 2000 a world record of A$176,000 was paid for a complete set of Grange vintages from 1951 to 1995.
Penfolds Grange is the leading auction wine in Australia and Australia's major red sold on the global wine auction circuit. While the 1951 is recognised to be past its peak in sheer quality terms, its scarcity value has made it the ultimate collector's item with a record A$46,620 paid for it in April 2001.
The 1953 and 1955 are also scarce and while they don't have the symbolic value of the 1951, they command high prices thanks to their astonishing quality and longevity. Of the so-called 'hidden' Granges (1957, 1958 and 1959), the 1959 is the one holding up best today, yet thanks to the rarity factor again, the 1957 Grange Bin 50 sold recently for A$13,000 (as did the 1956 Grange Bin 53).
At the most recent auction of Grange in the UK, Christie's South Kensington sold sold a number of lots of vintages of Grange from 1964 to 1990. Of the older vintages up for auction, the most highly-prized vintages were the 1964, a bottle of which fetched £140, 1976 (£147), 1977 (£173) and 1978 (£207). Since 1978, the price of Grange at auction for most vintages has remained fairly steady, hovering between around £80 - £120 a bottle with the most favoured modern vintages, the 1986 and 1990, exceeding the average at £163 and £140 a bottle respectively.
It will be interesting to see how Grange will fare at auction in the future in the light of a gathering global interest in the finest and rarest wines of the New World. This interest has been in part unleashed by excitement over the new raft of limited quantity-high demand cult and garage wines emerging from California and Bordeaux.
With a number of, as yet, little-known Australian cult wines such as Three Rivers, Noon and Duck Muck coming to the fore, it may well be that a price revision is due, in which case Grange will begin to look historically undervalued. If so, the great modern vintages, notably 1986, 1990, 1991, 1994 and 1996, could start to command considerably higher prices than they do today and turn a collector's dream into a wine drinker's nightmare.
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