Penfolds Bin 600 California Cabernet Shiraz 2018

This multiregional California blend contains fruit from Napa, Sonoma, and the winery’s own Camatta Hills property, planted to cuttings from its Kalimna and Magill estates in South Australia; located in Paso Robles’ Creston District, it was originally called Creston 600 Ranch, and the wine was named Bin 600 in its honour. With its rolling hills, large diurnal temperature swings, and clay-loam and calcareous soils, the terroir is reminiscent of the Barossa Valley.

Rich fruit, integrated but assertive tannin, an impression of layers. It feels cuddly and accessible at first but as it breathes its arms flex and its muscles show. There’s an earthen quality to this, high in minerals, steeped in black tea, sweet with fruit and sweet with meat. Plum into redcurrant, aromatic herb into coffee, vanilla slipped through the cream. It tastes red and blue, flowers and fruits. It has the Penfolds house style all over it but it also tastes different; there’s enough here to warrant the excursion. With every sip, I became more enamoured. There’s personality here. It has a presence without being weighty or overburdened. I wanted to drink more of it.

This 2018 Bin 600 is the first release of this new Penfolds California label. It is a blend of two different regions and two different varieties: 78% Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa Valley and 22% Shiraz from their vineyards in the Camatta Hills area of California Central Coast (about 15 miles east of Paso Robles). The interesting twist to the story behind this wine is that Block 10 in the Camatta Hills vineyard was planted in the late 1990s with Shiraz cuttings from two of Penfolds' most iconic South Australia vineyards: Magill Estate and Kalimna vineyard. This is the Shiraz component. "So," Peter Gago told me, "this has been a project in the making for a long time. We see this project as a continuation—making wine through a Penfolds lens, but made in California."