A wine from Mudgee has won the Best Grenache Award at the 2024 Sydney Royal Wine Show. All the award winners from the show are worth celebrating but this grenache award is the standout news. Grenache at the quality end of the market has become, over the past decade, one of the hottest and most closely-followed grape varieties in Australia. The quality at the top end of Australian grenache has, in this time, gone through the roof. This means that competition in the grenache class is incredibly stiff.

The McLaren Vale wine region dominates the grenache headlines, followed by the Barossa Valley, followed by Langhorne Creek, the Clare Valley, Heathcote, and a range of West Australian regions. I’ve probably left a region or two out but the point is: Mudgee in general doesn’t figure in grenache calculations, or conversations.

Huntington Estate’s win here – given that the Sydney Royal is one of the biggest and most prestigious wine shows in Australia – is therefore a major victory for both Huntington Estate, and for the wider Mudgee wine region. It strikes a blow. Wine regions are nothing if not a battle for footsteps, eyeballs and tastebuds; this wine, from a place unexpected, will attract all three.

It’s an eye-catching result.

The first thing I did, this morning, on reading this news, was call in a sample of the wine. I’ll review it on The Winefront as soon as I can. Huntington Estate Special Release Grenache 2023 is a wine grown on vines that were planted in the late 1990s. It saw no new oak, which is always a good thing with grenache. It saw some whole bunches, which is usually good too. Interestingly, the oak it was matured in included some American oak.