Henschke: tasting the newly released 2021 single vineyard wines with Stephen and Prue Henschke
Website: https://www.henschke.com.au/
It’s the start of vintage when I catch up with Stephen and Prue Henschke to taste through these wines. They were 10% through, but now they’ll be close to finishing – this article was delayed because of an embargo on writing up the 2021 single-vineyard wines to allow everyone the chance to taste.
‘It looks good,’ says Stephen. ‘We have had quite warm summery weather right through, and no rain for months now. But the positive is that we are getting cold nights. We are getting really nice continentality in the Eden Valley, so we are getting good flavours and good acids, and the pHs are balanced. Everything looks great and there is fantastic colour in the fruit.
Pretty much everything goes through the Henschke winery in the Eden Valley, but if they have to much to deal with they do have an option. ‘Generally, we prefer to do it all ourselves,’ says Stephen. They have just upgraded the winery with new fermenters that Andreas Henschke, Stephen and Prue’s son, has designed. They also have a more efficient receival area for destemming and whole berry sorting – they now have an optical sorting machine, which they used for the first time in 2024. ‘We have been fine-tuning the instrument,’ says Stephen, ‘but it’s amazing. It gets out lots of rubbish.’ They also use a vibrating sorting material, which gets rid of the small shot berries.
What sort of rejection rate is there? ‘It’s very low, in a season like this,’ he says. ‘We’d be looking at below 1%. It is taking out raisined berries and bits of little jacks.’ Stephen says that another winery tried making a wine out of the material their optical sorter rejected and it was horrible.
Red winemaking involves the use of a submerged cap, in which some wooden boards (or more recently, stainless steel) keep the cap of grape skins that tends to float to the top in active fermentation under the surface of the developing wine. ‘We have been using submerged cap for 150 years,’ says Stephen, ‘so it has been well and truly tried and tested. It works beautifully.’
The only downside is that you have to shovel the skins afterwards, which is quite a bit of labour. ‘It keeps the boys and girls fit,’ he says. ‘Andreas has just designed a stainless steel version of the open fermenters with submerged cap, which we can then drop directly into the press below.’
The concrete fermenters they have been using so far were built in the 1950s and have a capacity of 4.5 tons and 6.5 tons, and are quite flat, giving a large surface to area ratio. The ferments don’t get too hot, and they pump over twice a day. This helps keep the temperatures down, and they can also do rack and return. The new stainless steel fermenters have in-built temperature control. They don’t do a cold soak before fermentation, and the end of fermentation they taste and then make a decision when to press. They rarely do any extended maceration. ‘We don’t want the tannins drying out at the finish,’ says Stephen.
Do they ever use whole bunch? ‘In our region, because we have such old vines, we don’t need to incorporate whole bunches to get any added complexity.’ Stephen adds that by the time they get to the fermenter, around half the berries are squished so they are running with maybe 40-50% whole berries in the ferment, which gives nice complexity.
Do they every have to acidify? ‘It will depend on the season,’ says Stephen. ‘In 2021, 22, 23, 24 we haven’t had to correct anything. In the 2023 vintage we had acidity to give away. We had quite high acids and low pHs. In cooler seasons like 2021 they just have such beautiful natural balance. This year so far we are amazed at the balance.’
The barrel regime depends on the wine. For the Cyril Henschke they use just French oak, and in this case it’s 8% new. The single vineyard wines spend almost two years in barrel. It’s a mix of hogsheads and barriques.
For a while they used Vino-Lok closures rather than cork, a direction they took almost 20 years ago. ‘We had had nothing but bad experiences with natural cork,’ says Stephen. ‘By 2000 we couldn’t cope with losing so much wine because of bad quality cork.’ Prue and Stephen studied at Geisenheim in the mid-1970s, with Professor Helmut Becker, who had been doing different closure styles. ‘We saw that screwcap was a far superior closure to cork,’ he says. ‘I started using screwcap from 1996 with our Julius Riesling.’ They had to fill the bottle higher because they weren’t using a cork. ‘We held the first 20 year vertical tasting of Riesling [under screwcap] in Australia.’
They used Vino-Lok for the countries that didn’t understand screwcaps. ‘ Most countries do now,’ he says. So they’ve switched all the wines to screwcap, with the regular tin/saran lining.
‘The challenging thing for us with Vino-Lok is that the bottles had to come from Europe. The bottles are made in Germany and the Vino-Loks are made in Czechoslovakia. They have to be shipped out here, and then quite often sent overseas again. So from a carbon miles perspective it didn’t make sense. It makes much more sense to use locally made glass and locally made Stelvin caps.’
In the vineyard they now do no cultivation, even under the vines. ‘We have permanent swards, so that would range from cock’s foot and ryes to native grasses,’ says Prue. ‘Whatever is there gets mown flat, and it tends to die. And then under vine we have compost and straw, which has been a godsend, mainly because of the change in temperature under the vine. When you have mulch under vine you maintain more water and the vine isn’t going through so much stress. And also the basal leaves are not dropping.’ She thinks that the basal leaves drop because with no mulch the surface roots in the top 10-20 cm are dying off, but with the mulch they are not. ‘It is a real benefit. Even the YANS are better. There is less bunch stem necrosis, too.’ The mulch lasts for three years, which removes the need for undervine cultivation or herbicide spraying. They also use sheep in the winter.
So, to 2021. ‘We had some good winter rains, which always sets up for a good vintage,’ says Prue. ‘We had a slightly later budburst, and then a little bit more rain during spring, which scared the living daylights out of us because of downy. The last thing we want is downy at flowering. Then we had this voracious gale force wind at flowering. It shopped off some of the shoots, so this was a bit of an issue. Generally, things progressed well after that, with a cool summer and a bit of rain at veraison which is ideal. Then we went into an even, dry autumn.’ This was a great relief after 2019 and 2020. It was the coolest summer since 2002.
THE WINES
The winemaking is identical for these wines, says Stephen. So what we are seeing in the differences is the site, plus some vine age influence.
Henschke Cyril Henschke Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon 2021 Eden Valley, Barossa, Australia
14.5% alcohol. First made in 1978, from the Henschke Eden Valley vineyard planted in 1966. The vineyard is on a north-facing gentle slope and the rows run east-west, with vertically trellised canopies. There are 25 rows of Cabernet Sauvignon and 5 rows of Cabernet Franc and 8 rows of Merlot. Each of these components are made separately and then after nearly two years in barrel the final blend is put together. It depends on the season whether the other varieties improve the quality of the wine. Classically Australian in style (in a good way) with sweet blackcurrant fruit on the nose as well as a hint of mint and dried herbs. Perfumed and inviting. In the mouth this has a sweet core of blackcurrant fruit with some fresh red cherry notes and also a hint of tar and herbs, showing a lovely flow across the palate. Ripe and rich, but also fresh and quite elegant, with the potential for development. Single-variety Cabernet isn’t a speciality of the Barossa, but from this site in the Eden Valley, it works really well. 96/100
Henschke The Wheelwright Vineyard 2021 Eden Valley, Barossa, Australia
14.5% alcohol. Ungrafted Shiraz planted by Cyril in 1968 at 500 m altitude in the Henschke Eden Valley Vineyard, on contours. It was trendy to plant on the contours (keyline water management, avoiding erosion and keeping the water on the property). But it makes putting the vines on a VSP quite a challenge because pulling the wires tight is a problem. They put in stretches of VSP and put a strainer in, with straight-ish lines. This wine was first made in 2015, released in 2018. Sandy loam over sandstone soils, with a bit of schist. This is acidic soil, so it’s different to the red/brown earths of Mount Edelstone and Hill of Grace. Under the sandy loam there is a prismatic clay, so the roots go quite deep, making the vines vigorous. This wine has a sweetly fruited but compact nose of focused black cherry and berry fruits, with some spicy framing. The palate has concentration and freshness, with some minty brightness and ripe but still taut red berry fruits, with good acidity. There’s a real presence and brightness to this wine: the sweet red fruits are nicely framed by some spice, and there’s a sense of energy, as well as a slight acidic brittleness on the finish. This will age effortlessly for quite a while. Don’t underestimate this wine in the Henschke line-up. 95/100
Henschke Mount Edelstone Vineyard 2021 Eden Valley, Barossa, Australia
14.5% alcohol. This vineyard was planted in 1912 by Ronald Angas, and unusually for the time it was 100% Shiraz. This wine was first made in 1952. Ungrafted vines planted on friable, gravelly red brown earth soils. This has vibrant aromatics of ripe cherries and plums with a hint of acid lift and subtle pepper and tar notes. In the mouth there’s nice concentration with a sweet core of berry fruits, pronounced spicy acidity and some peppery detail, as well as dried herbs (sage, rosemary) and tar, with some raspberry brightness on the finish, and even a slight minty twist. Classically Eden valley with a sort of sweet and sour riff taking place. I really like the sweet core of the fruit, and the elegance combined with some depth. This has the capacity for further development. 96/100
Henschke Hill of Roses 2021 Eden Valley, Barossa, Australia
From a nursery block that’s a selection from the old vines of the Hill of Grace vineyard, planted in 1989. This is the result of a mass selection from the grandfathers to preserve the genetic character. They planted cuttings right on the end of the Post Office block, and since then they’ve been waiting to see when a young vine turns into an old vine. ‘Now that they are 32 years old they are starting to show the complexity of an old vine,’ says Prue. But if it’s compared with Hill of Grace, it’s still not quite there. ‘It is a bit shorter on the palate; there’s just another component in the Hill of Grace,’ she says. Stephen recalls that for the first few harvests the wine was just like a pretty Shiraz and didn’t taste at all like Hill of Grace, despite the same site and same vine material. ‘It got to 2001, when the vines were 12 years old, and we thought the wines were starting to get serious,’ he says. ‘There were beautiful flavours and we bottled it for the first time in 2001. When you look at the wines [since then] you can definitely see an increase in complexity, in structure, in spice and depth of fruit.’ For now, these vines are still considered too young to go into Hill of Grace. This is really aromatic on the nose with a core of sweet cherry and berry fruits framed with some blackcurrant, pepper and mint, as well as a twist of tar. The palate is fresh and supple, but deeply concentrated, with bright berry fruits as well as fine spices, well resolved tannins, and some sweet acid: this is already full of appeal and drinkability, but has the stuffing to age for a long time. The bright fruit is really high up in the mix. 96/100
Henschke Hill of Grace 2021 Eden Valley, Barossa, Australia
14.5% alcohol. From one of the oldest extant vineyards in the world, let alone Australia. The soils have a beautiful layer of loess, around 30 cm, over a red/brown earth. This varies from one hectare to the next: underneath can be a silty clay, or a limestone ridge, or schist. In one block there is actually a scree on top of the red/brown earth, which gives earlier ripening. There are 8 hectares at Hill of Grace, and each block is different. The wine is a combination of 6 small blocks within the vineyard, with different characteristics. ‘We can see the flavour differences,’ says Stephen. ‘There are subtle flavour difference between the different parts of the vineyard.’ These blocks are picked over about a week. This has brooding aromatics of sweet blackberry and black cherry fruit with some dried herbs and pepper, as well as subtle tar, black tea, five spices, pot pourri and wood spice, but all the time focusing on the fruit. The palate has amazing concentration but it’s never heavy or dense, with a bright acid line and a sense of elegance. There’s some tannin here and also good acidity, with complex mint, ginger, lavender and tar notes, finishing bright and vital. Of course, this will age for a long time. Remarkable and profound, displaying its origins, and even approachable now, although there’s a big upside to be gained from cellaring. 97/100
