Grange 2004 tasted online

Leave it to the extraordinarily energetic and creative Peter Gago to ratchet up Penfolds’ annual, much ballyhooed 1 May release of its newest Grange Shiraz.

It was the Penfolds' chief winemaker’s idea – not a marketing department decision apparently – to conduct the first ‘transpacific virtual tasting of new-release Grange’ via video conference. It happened in the US yesterday, while tv cameras from Australia’s major news stations were capturing the festivities and queue of buyers of the 2004 Grange at Magill Estate in Adelaide on what was already May Day there.

I was the fortunate one to be on the...