2021 Henschke Hill of Grace Shiraz (Gift Boxed)

Henschke: ‘A Vintage Graced By An Ancient Land’

Three perfect 100-points scores (to date),
& six 99-point scores…

100 points, Andrew Caillard MW | The Vintage Journal 2025
Medium deep crimson. Expressive raspberry, blackberry, cassis, hint elderberry/violet/ sage aromas with mocha, marzipan notes. Elegant yet powerful, dense but buoyant palate with ample blackberry pastille, blackcurrant, raspberry fruits, fine supple/ grainy tannins, lovely mid palate volume/ richness and superbly balanced grilled almond, roasted chestnut notes. Finishes claret firm with a featherweight plume of bittersweet tannins. A beguiling and lasting landmark Hill of Grace vintage with wonderful definition, vinosity and torque. 14.5% alc Drink 2028 – 2048.

20+/20 points -Matthew Jukes
While its scale is breathtakingly impressive, there is thrilling elegance here, too. This is a spectacular wine from start to finish, with every molecule in its place. There is a complete directory of this vineyard’s flavours on display in this wine, seemingly cataloguing every nuance from the glorious, inaugural 1958 until the present day and delivering them in epic harmony. It seems to embrace its ancient history and communicate it in a thoroughly modern language... 2021 is a genuinely humbling wine, and it represents another chapter of wonder in the legend of this ancient land.

100 points, Ken Gargett – Winepilot.com
The 60th release of this famous wine. Many years down the track, expect this to sit amongst the greatest the vineyard has given us. This famous old vineyard in Eden Valley next to the wonderful and scenic Lutheran church, was planted back around 1860, with pre-phylloxera material brought out by a family ancestor, Nicolaus Stanitzki. The first vintage was 1958. Hill of Grace was not made in 1960, 1974, 2000 and 2011. If the pass mark is a perfect or near perfect score, this walks it in. There is some of that exuberance we saw in the Hill of Roses, but this is more serious, more intense, concentrated and complex. We have tobacco leaves, cassis (one note I made was that it was like an alcoholic cassis smoothie), sage, black fruits, dried herbs, aniseed, and a touch of forest floor. Knife-edge balance, incredible length, that creamy and seductive texture, silk tannins – this is an amazing wine which more than lives up to the hype. Well cellared examples should provide immense pleasure over the next forty to fifty years. 100.

99 points – Huon Hooke, The Real Review
Good depth of lightly purple-rimmed colour; the bouquet is a riot of dried herb scents from thyme to sage and oregano with smoky black pepper, vegetable stock, red and darker fruits including raspberry, dark plum and blackberry. The wine is full-bodied and flows evenly across the tongue, with an effortless intensity and suppleness of texture. Fine tannins are an important part of the very long, high-impact aftertaste. A superb wine of intricate detail and elegance. 

99 points - Dave Brookes, The Wine Companion
This release will go down in the annals of Australian fine wine as one of the classic releases for Hill of Grace. With a strong vintage and even stronger pedigree, the gnarled old, circa 1860s-planted, shiraz vines have really come up with the goods with this release and as I sit to taste this wine with Stephen Henschke he shakes his head and says, "it just amazes me that my grandmother's grandfather planted these vines". The eagle-eyed will notice a skip in vintage. The yields were down horribly in 2020 across all the Henschke vineyards but man, did 2021 deliver. Super bright magenta/crimson in the glass with a wonderfully deep aromatic profile. Doris plum, blackberry and black cherry with hints of mace, sage, panforte, cedar, dark chocolate, tapenade, pepper, charcuterie, graphite, crushed quartz and violets. From the aromatic detail to the amplitude, purity and flow of fruit, the wine is absolutely on song with stunning length of flavour and presence on the palate, sailing away slowly with tight, fine-grained tannins and the most graceful of travels on the palate. An absolute classic for this wine.

More Information:
The Henschke family is pleased to announce the global launch of its revered 2021 Single Vineyard Release from the Eden Valley on Wednesday, 7 May 2025. This highly anticipated collection includes the 2021 vintage of Hill of Grace Shiraz, Hill of Roses Shiraz, Mount Edelstone Shiraz, The Wheelwright Shiraz and Cyril Henschke Cabernet Sauvignon.

As single-vineyard wines, production is limited by the size of the site and how the season unfolds.

The most precious and historic of the Henschke vineyards, Hill of Grace, is just 4 hectares of old-vine shiraz with the first vines planted around 1860. Cuttings were taken from a mass selection of these Hill of Grace ‘Grandfather Vines’ by Prue Henschke in 1989 and were planted as a 1-hectare nursery block, now producing Hill of Roses Shiraz.