2025 Halliday Top Rated

Best grenache and blends in Australia 2025

By The Tasting Team

The Thistledown Wines This Charming Man Single Vineyard Clarendon Grenache 2023 has been named the best grenache in Australia.

The Halliday Wine Companion Awards celebrate the best wines in Australia. Below you'll find Australia's top grenache wines, along with the wine ratings awarded by the Tasting Team.

There’s clearly something special going on in the world of Australian grenache. The winner here is a gorgeous wine, but it’s a category where gorgeousness abounds. If ever there’s been a category that’s been transformed, for the overwhelming better, it’s Australian grenache. McLaren Vale takes the win, the lead and the headlines, but the Barossa/Eden offering is strengthening.

2025 Grenache and Blends of the Year

Thistledown Wines This Charming Man Single Vineyard Clarendon Grenache 2023, McLaren Vale

98 points (PD*) | Price when tasted $95


Thistledown Wines This Charming Man Single Vineyard Clarendon Grenache 2023, McLaren Vale

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Dry-grown bush vines fruit from the legendary Smart vineyard in Clarendon. Fermented wild with 20 per cent whole bunches, matured in French hogsheads. This is early on this wine, with so much to unfurl, but the promise is striking. Sour cherry, pomegranate, cranberry, blood orange and a ferrous rockiness, white pepper, raspberry leaf tea and warm terracotta cast across a framework of finely lacy but expansive tannins. Ample air, over two days, sees this soar, though only time will unlock all its secrets. If a case still needs to be made for those that doubt McLaren Vale grenache is inimitable, thrilling and unquestionably world class, then here is Exhibit A. Stunning. – Marcus Ellis

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This is an edited extract from the 2025 Halliday Wine Companion, with reviews by James Halliday, Campbell Mattinson, Dave Brookes, Jane Faulkner, Jeni Port, Marcus Ellis, Mike Bennie, Philip Rich, Shanteh Wale and Toni Paterson MW. Cover art by Vera Babida.

*Panel decision – score awarded by the Halliday Tasting Team at the annual Awards judging.


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