The Craziest Wine and The Wine-Ark’s Top 50

The two top stories which are doing rounds in the wine circles is the news about the craziest wine of Australia and the top 50 collectible wines of Australia. Let’s catch these one by one.

“The Craziest Wine”

The name is David Franz Red Rose of 2015 vintage.

This has been made from 108 varieties of grapes sourced from the Barossa valley region. And, the man behind this crazy wine is David Franz Lehmann, of the David Franz Wines label fame.

The germination of this crazy idea started off some 10 years back when he first blended about 10 varieties of grapes from his own vineyard at Barossa wines. The effort got a major boost when he met Kevin Bartsch and used 105 varietals.

Each of the wines comes with a hand-made tissue of paper which lists all the grape varieties that have been used to make it.

 

Wine Ark’s Top 50 for 2016

Wine Ark brings out the list of its 50 most collectible Aussie wines every 3 years. This list is about all those wines which the Australians collected the most. The data is derived directly from cellar storage utilities in Australia. Last list was in 2013 and the current one is of 2016.

As per the current list of 2016, it is the Penfolds Bin 389 Cabernet Shiraz Blend Various Regions which has notched up the first position. Other two Penfolds wines, Penfolds Bin 95 Grange Shiraz Various Regions and Penfolds St Henri Shiraz Various Regions, hold the second and the third position respectively. Last name in the list of Pierro Chardonnay Margaret River.

This is for the first time in the last 9 years that Penfolds Bin 95 Grange Shiraz has lost its rank to the much cheaper version. With 8 entries in list, Penfolds is the most popular brand. Shiraz is the most popular varietal which makes up 46 percent of the listed wines, followed by Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet blend at 16 percent, chardonnay at 10 percent , Riesling 6 percent and Semillon 2 percent. There are about 41 red wines as compared to only 9 of white wines. Barossa Valley wine region has emerged as the most popular wine region of Australia for the collectors.

Here is the list of top 50 for 2016.