Penfolds, South Australia (Australia) Cabernet – Shiraz 2008

 The Penfolds Bin Series wines typically offer excellent quality and value, and this wine is pretty clearly the flagship bottling of the series.  Long known informally as “Baby Grange,” it could hardly have a more difficult title to live up to, and yet it almost always manages to do so.  The 2008 rendition is especially impressive (I’m not sure that I can remember a better one), offering excellent concentration and depth of flavor backed by serious structure, yet the wine is already thoroughly enjoyable if given some air and paired with food.  The wood is restrained and the tannins are quite ripe and fine in grain, but decanting is still strongly recommended as aeration makes this wine notably more expressive and also helps deal with a fairly heavy sediment that it is already throwing.  Complex and complete, this is a terrific accomplishment by Penfolds’ chief winemaker Peter Gago and his team.