Vanguardist 'Oeno' Grenache 2023

Concentrated, structured, properly serious. Vanguardist is a top-tier name in Aussie Grenache.

The fruit comes off the Rende family's Silver Sands vineyard in Blewitt Springs, planted in the late 1960s by Robert Rende and his father. The bush vines are dry-grown in deep, windblown sand over alluvial soil, farmed with organic and biodynamic preparations rather than irrigation and sprays.

Michael Corbett makes it. He picked up Grenache in the south of France back in 2009. He later moved from the Hunter Valley to McLaren Vale to chase it properly, founding Vanguardist in 2014. This bottling keeps oak out of the picture entirely, so the old vines speak without any wood character sitting over the top.

At 13.4 percent it drinks light on its feet for a McLaren Vale red. Give it a slight chill in summer, and it has the fruit and structure to hold in the cellar out to 2030.