Penfolds is the world's most acclaimed wine maker, offering bottles that draw on centuries of experience.

Venture about 20 kilometers from the center of the postcard-perfect city of Adelaide and you’ll find McGill Estate, where Penfolds has been making wine for 173 years.

Five or so hectares on the site, which also hosts the vintner’s headquarters, have been given over to cultivating dark-skinned Shiraz grapes. The vines here glow a green that mirrors the verdant hills cradling the place where Australia’s most famous brand was born.

 Despite talking to journalists in his wood-panelled office full of vintage photos and memorabilia dating back centuries, Penfolds chief winemaker Peter Gago makes it clear that he’s looking to the future.

“Wine used to be elitist. It shouldn’t be. It needs to change with the times, adapt and evolve,” Gago, who is only the fourth person to be named the custodian of Penfolds’ acclaimed Grange vintage, says. “There are new varieties. There are new viticultural areas. There are new wine stars. You can’t be a slavishly fashionable, but we do have to take them in hand. We have to experiment.”

 Gago, who immigrated to Australia from the United Kingdom when six, talks with excitement about some of the innovations introduced during his tenure.

 One example is the limited edition Penfolds Ampoule launched at the Cristal Room Baccarat in Moscow in 2012. Virtually hermetically sealed inside the blown-glass ampoule is 750ml of Penfolds 2004 Block 42-a rare, single-vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon released only in exceptional years.

 All 12 of the ampoules, which cost A$168,000 (US$126,556, Rp 1.717 billion), were sold. None have been opened, although Penfolds promises to send a winemaker with special tungsten-tipped, sterling silver scribe-snap to open the ampoules whenever an owner is ready.

 It’s no gimmick, Gago says. “We embraced the ampule. We are creating a vintner’s time capsule. It’s exciting from a wine perspective. What are those wines going to taste like in 300 years’ time?”

 Gago says his job, which he’s held since 2002, is not hard, giving credit to a small team of wine makers, some of whom have decades of experience.  

Penfolds draws upon long-standing relationships with more than 200 grape growers from Adelaide, the Barossa Valley, the Clare Valley, Coonawarra, Limestone Coast, and McLaren Vale, as well as those from cooler climates such as Tumbarumba in New South Wales, Henty in Victoria and Tasmania. However, its wines reflect the deep expertise at Penfolds, Gago says, whether it is in grape selection, knowing when to take juice out of the barrel and knowing when to bottle.

 One example is the 2016 Bin 311 Tumbarumba Chardonnay, which Penfolds premiered at a gala dinner in October 2016 in the tunnels underneath McGill Estate, where wine used to be aged in the cool darkness.

 “We’re not trying just to make a Chardonnay-flavored white wine — that all stopped about 15 years ago,” Gago says of the Bin 311. “Now at Penfolds, we’re looking at layers of flavor. We’re looking at complexities other than those introduced by the grape.”

 To cultivate this complexity, grapes for BIN 311 are gently pressed and not crushed, while the pressings go through a buffer before getting poured, incrementally, into individual barrels for aging. No two barriques have the same wine, Gago says, each will have a different blend of ferments and solids. “It’s not what goes into the blends. It’s what you take out of the different barriques that does not match the style of the wine that makes the blend.”

 Another noteworthy collaboration was with Saint-Louis, the oldest glassmaker in Europe and one of the most prestigious crystal houses in the world, to make the Penfolds Aevum Imperial Service Ritual and Limited Edition Crystal Decanter, priced at $185,000 and $2,100, respectively.

 The exquisite hand-blown pieces, contain the 2012 Grange, a 98 percent blend of Shiraz with 2 percent Cabernet Sauvignon from the Barossa Valley and McLaren Vale.

 No single bottle turned Gago into an oenophile — there were about 2,000. He says his passion grew gradually — and insidiously from an interest into a collection, then into a hobby and a second bachelor’s degree in applied science in oenology. “I fooled around and one day, I was finishing off a degree.”

 When talking about what makes a good wine, Gago is phlegmatic. “The old minds used to believe if a wine was accessible in youth, that it wouldn’t go the distance, and conversely, if a wine is strong and muscular, it will probably soften over time and become a good wine later,” according to Gago. “I say no. A good wine starts off as a good wine. It doesn’t become a good wine in year 25. It evolves in the bottle over time.”