An online auction is under way for a collection of Penfolds Grange, with the 60 bottles of wine set to fetch thousands of dollars, reports TIM DORNIN. 

A COLLECTION of Penfolds Grange is up for auction, with the 60 bottles being offered as individual lots, including some expected to fetch thousands of dollars.

The collection dates from 1959 to 2018, but it doesn’t include some of the earliest vintages. Grange was first produced in 1951.

Every bottle is presented in its original box, with some signed by John Duval, Penfolds’ third chief winemaker producing Grange.

The collection has been curated by a former employee of Penfolds and collectively is expected to sell for more than $100,000.

It has been stored in a climate-controlled cellar and checked at the Grange clinic by former company winemakers.

Lloyds Auction chief operations officer Lee Hames said the auction was attracting international attention.

“We haven’t seen a wine collection as complete and pristine and as carefully looked after as this,” Mr Hames said.

“This is one for the ages, and collections don’t come along like this very often.”

Among the most sought-after bottles is a 1990 vintage that was the first wine from outside France or the US to win the “Spectator” magazine’s coveted wine of the year award.

With the auction to wrap up on Sunday, among the highest bids so far are $3100 for a 1963 bottle and $2300 for the 1973 vintage.

The Grange owes much of its status to its history, starting out as an experiment by Penfolds’ first chief winemaker Max Schubert, who did not sell it commercially but gifted bottles to friends and family.

The initial response to his creation was not favourable, and by 1957 Penfolds had ordered him to stop production.

Despite this direction, the next three vintages were still produced and a subsequent tasting of the early wines by the Penfolds board returned more favourable opinions.

In 2021 a bottle of 1951 Grange, signed by Schubert, sold for a record $122,001.

At the time, estimates suggested there were up to 35 bottles of the original vintage still in circulation, including about 15 that were part of complete sets.

In 2018, a bottle of the 1951 vintage sold for $80,386, with two bottles fetching $81,000 each the following year.

At that same auction in 2019, a then full set of Grange, from 1951 to 2015, was snapped up for $372,800.

That was followed in December 2020 by a Sydney wine lover paying $430,000 for a set.