Portal:Wine/Selected winery/19
Penfolds is an Australian wine producer, founded in 1844 by Dr. Christopher Rawson Penfold, an English physician who emigrated to Australia. It is one of Australia's oldest wineries.
Penfold was a believer in the medicinal benefits of wine and before emigrating to Australia, obtained some vine cuttings from France. Arriving in Australia, he set up in practice at Magill on the eastern outskirts of Adelaide, South Australia and planted vines around his stone cottage which he called The Grange after his wife, Mary's, former home. Initially, Penfold produced fortified wines, for his patients in the style of sherry and port. As demand for the wines increased the winery was expanded.
Mary Penfold assumed the running of the winery after the death of her husband in 1870. After Mary retired in 1884 her daughter Georgina and son-in-law Thomas Hyland took over the day to day running of the winery. The Penfold family continued to operate the business very successfully and although the company became public in 1962 the Penfold family remained in control until 1976.
During the 1940s and 1950s the company changed its focus to table wines to accommodate changing tastes. This led to experiments by Penfolds' chief winemaker, Max Schubert which would eventually lead to the production of Penfolds' and Australia's most famous wine, Grange Hermitage, later renamed simply Grange.
Control of Penfolds passed to Tooth & Co, a brewer based in New South Wales in 1976, to the Adelaide Steamship Co in 1982 and then in 1990 to S.A.Brewing which became part of Southcorp, an Australian conglomerate. Since 2005, the Southcorp wine brands and wineries have been owned by the Foster's Group. Penfolds currently operates two wineries; at Magill, near Adelaide and at Nuriootpa in the Barossa Valley. (Full article...)