The Wine Bottle

Penfolds is the most popular brand among Australian fine wine collectors and it’s also one of the country’s largest wine storage companies – their flagship wine being the ultra–premium Penfold Grange.

Sydney based Wine Ark revealed that Coonawarra wine region in South Australia, is the most popular wine producing region among Australian collectors.

Wine Ark estimates it has more than fifty percent of the national Australian wine storage market.  Their comments come following their analysis of more than 3 million bottles of wine held in 8,500 private collections – and worth an estimated AUS$250m.  That’s an average of $83 per bottle.

Wine Ark CEO, Mr Dean Taylor, said the review is based on the volume of bottles in storage of each wine, and believes it is an accurate measure of variety of collectable wines across Australia.

The Foster’s-owned Penfolds has 8 of the top 50 wines.The next most popular being Wynn’s Coonawarra Estate, with 3 of the top 50 collectable wines.

Hardly suprising then that South Australia wine brands account for more than 60% of the Top 50 collectable wines.

Shiraz is the most popular wine to be collected, amassing 46% of the Top 50 wines.  And Coonawarra is the dominant wine region, providing 22% of the top 50.

‘It shows how much Australians have embraced Shiraz,’ said Taylor.
As yet, no Pinot Noir wines have made the top 50 collectable wines list. Taylor suggests this is because the Australian wineries are still developing the variety. As yet, not a great deal of Pinot Noir is being cellared.  Though this is expected to change over time.

Grange is the most collected Shiraz and red wine – and the most collected wine overall.  This was followed by Penfolds Bin 389 Cabernet Shiraz blend, which was the leader when Wine Ark released its original list of most popularly collected wines in 2006.

Interestingly, the most collected Pinot Noir was Mount Mary, from the Yarra Valley.  It might be expected to increase in collections over time.

In the Wine Wines, Leeuwin Estate Art Series was the most collectable wine and Chardonnay.  This was 11th overall.

The top top Riesling amogst Wine Ark collectors was Gosset Polish Hill, which was 13th overall.

The most collected Semillon, Tyrrell’s Vat 1, placed 26th overall.

Tags: collectable wines, penfolds grange, red wine, shiraz