Koonunga Hill

You probably know that whereas most 'quality' wines are labeled with the date of the vintage (i.e. the year in which the grapes were picked) the majority of Champagne is not. It is a non-vintage wine. This is because some proportion of what ends up in the bottle has been held back from prior years in order to enable the blender the opportunity to produce a product that is consistent, year-on-year.

There are other ways of achieving a similar result, one of which has been adopted by the makers of:

Week K (2022) Penfolds Koonunga Hill Chardonnay 2021. Tesco £9

Penfolds have been making wine in Australia since 1844 and have an extensive range on offer. At the top end there is the famous 'Grange' which will set you back a four-figure sum (in Sterling) for a bottle and it is only by chance that I was once able to sample some. It was very good, but as I have questioned before, was it that good? I'm not sure, but it was good.

What we have here is not Grange and I only mention the expensive offering to demonstrate that this Koonunga Hill Chardonnay has been made in a specific way because that is was the producer believes at least one section of the market requires.

Consistency is the name of the game. Unlike my golf where the only thing that remains consistent are my inconsistent performances. This consistency is achieved by Penfold's 'multi-region, multi-vineyard' blending policy which means they will draw on resources from a wide variety of sites in order to find fruit that will, in the hands of a skilled blender, produce something almost exactly the same in every bottle, in every vintage.

There is definitely a market for consistency. For many products consistency, by which I mean the purchaser knows exactly what they expect and then they get it, is seen as an essential quality. I have no argument with this, but it does take away some of the enjoyment of exploration.

The wine itself is pleasant. It has plenty of warm, stone fruit flavour and a strong hint of oak. I can't be certain in the reason for my assessment, as I had read about the intended consistency before I tasted it, but although pleasant it feels a little as if it has been assembled in kit form: this much fruit, this much acidity and this much oak. 

Having said that I would buy it again, perhaps for a party where I wanted to be sure what I was serving my guests.