Penfolds

The Australian Penfolds winery was founded in 1845, when Dr Christopher Rawson Penfolds left England with his wife Mary, moved to Australia, near Adelaide, and bought a small plot of land in the middle of which he built his cottage, to which he gave the name 'Grange', i.e. 'The Farm'. Dr. Penfolds, like many of his colleagues of the time, was absolutely convinced of the thaumaturgic virtues of wine and, when he left England, he brought with him some vine shoots from the south of France and planted them in his small cottage; he thus began to produce small quantities of wine, which he used mainly for curative purposes with his patients.

As demand increased over the years, the couple bought new plots of land to increase wine production. Dr. Penfolds died in 1870 and his wife Mary took over the running of the Grange until she handed over the reins of the business to their daughter Georgina and her husband Thomas Hayland; the winery took on the name Penfolds Hayland and continued to grow and establish itself as a leader in the Australian wine market, in fact in 1920 it produced 50% of the wine produced on the southern continent, including whites such as Chardonnay  and reds such as the iconic Shiraz. Until 1940, Penfolds Hayland had produced almost exclusively fortified wines and Brandy, but from then on it began to produce table wine, under the expert guidance of the 'winemaker' Max Schubert, a very capable young man who joined the company in 1930 as a delivery boy.

Max, in the early post-war period, travelled to France to deepen his knowledge of French wines and winemaking processes, and in 1951 produced the first vintage of Grange Hermitage from the Shiraz grape variety on an experimental basis: to this day, the Grange is still the flagship wine of Penfolds Hayland. In 1972 the family sold its shares to Tooth and Co and exited the scene for good; today, in the 21st century, the new management continues to hold the quality and name of Penfold Hayland wines very high: one of Australia's finest.