HLEP: Checking Granges Authenticity.

[Randy Caparoso]

Simple enough. Ask the owner of the shop where he got the Grange from. If it's from a distributor with legitimate distribution rights to Penfolds (or wines of Southcorp) wines, then it's authentic. If not, there's always reason to question.

I'm not surprised by the price, though. Grange has been climbing steadily in recent years. A question of rarity rather than sheer quality, though, since there are now dozens of extraordinary, Shiraz based Australian reds available these days, for far less than this. I'm saying this simply because I have sat through a couple of verticals of the wine recently, and I can't say I've been overwhelmed. Nowadays they're more for the collectors who couldn't tell a great wine from a hole in the whatever, and lord knows there are tons of those as well.