2026 Wine of the Year
Thistledown Wines This Charming Man Single Vineyard Clarendon Grenache 2024, McLaren Vale, South Australia
98 points | Price when tasted $95
Thistledown Wines This Charming Man Single Vineyard Clarendon Grenache 2024 has been named the 2026 Companion's Wine of the Year.
"This was our first year of looking at varietal grenache as a class, without blends, and nothing to muddy the waters, so to speak; just purity under a microscope. And this wine wowed. The room was left with no uncertainty, nor reason for second guessing; this wine was simply the finest example of varietal grenache on the bench and, further, the finest wine full stop.
This is a wine of provenance, quality and sheer depth of flavour. A wine that drinks well now and has the foundations to go the distance in the cellar. This is also a wine that speaks of an important site; the vineyard is comprised of dry-grown bush vines and planted to red clay loam soils by the Smart family, who have dedicated three generations to maintaining and improving the hillside vineyard in Clarendon, a subregion within McLaren Vale.
The wine’s namesake Bernard Smart (who passed at 90 years of age in 2023) was the Charming Man. Bernard’s son, Wayne Smart, is as inflexible about maintaining the rigorous vineyard practices as the generations before him. In the winery, winemaker and founder of Thistledown Wines Giles Cooke MW (yes, Giles is also a Master of Wine) retained 20 per cent of the pick to be fermented as whole bunches in a concrete pyramid, then matured in hogsheads, with 20 per cent new oak.
This is another exceptional wine from this estate (the 2023 vintage of this wine won the Grenache & Blends category for the 2025 Companion); a faithful jewel of the Vale." – Katrina Butler
From the Smart vineyard – a Grand Cru of the Vale – with the great Bernard Smart (vale) immortalised on the front label. Fermented as whole bunches in a concrete pyramid, then matured in hogsheads, with 20% new oak. Such a delightfully pale-hued, fragrantly savoury and finely structured suite this year. A red aperitivo thread builds through the sour cherry, tart redcurrant, pomegranate and dried cranberry notes, with bitter orange, coriander seed, cardamom, white pepper, cinchona bark, cinnamon and bitter alpine herbs. There’s such engaging transparency to this, such serene refinement, such poise. It’s a wine of incredible depth and weightlessness, suspended over a tannic net of such intricacy. It's as good an iteration as I can recall tasting on release. A great wine. – Marcus Ellis
The wine always comes from the same block, which, at just over 50 years old, is half the age of the oldest part of the vineyard. Fruit is fermented in concrete, in alternating layers of whole bunches and crushed fruit, with no further extraction: no pump-overs, no plunges. “It’s very much an infusion,” says Giles. “The less we’ve done and the less we’ve controlled all the external inputs, the better the wines have been received.”
“It’s a bit of a cliché now but it really is just about the vineyard – getting the right fruit from the right place picked at the right time and letting it express itself.”
While fans of The Smiths would recognise the wine’s name, really it’s an ode to Bernard (there's an illustration of him in a tractor on the label). “For him to have kept those vines in the ground for decades, without anybody to buy his fruit, is incredible. I wanted to acknowledge that dedication while he was still here to see it,” he says.
“I love that wine has the ability to not only return you to a vineyard, but also give you just a sense of all of the history that's gone on in those vineyards and how hard people have toiled. And I don’t think there are many varieties that evoke that in the same way grenache does.”
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Previous Wine of the Year recipients were Bass Phillip Reserve Pinot Noir 2010 (2014), Xanadu Stevens Road Cabernet Sauvignon 2011 (2015), Serrat Shiraz Viognier 2014 (2016), Best’s Thomson Family Shiraz 2014 (2017), Henschke Hill of Grace 2012 (2018), Duke’s Vineyard Magpie Hill Reserve Riesling 2017 (2019), Yangarra Estate Vineyard High Sands McLaren Vale Grenache 2016 (2020), Brokenwood Graveyard Vineyard Hunter Valley Shiraz 2018 (2021), Yarra Yering Dry Red No. 1 2019 (2022), Best’s Wines Foudre Ferment Riesling 2021 (2023) Yangarra Estate Vineyard Old Vine Grenache 2021 (2024) and Oakridge 864 Drive Block Funder & Diamond Vineyard Chardonnay 2022 (2025).
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This is an edited extract from the 2026 Halliday Wine Companion, with reviews by Dave Brookes, Jane Faulkner, Jeni Port, Katrina Butler, Marcus Ellis, Mike Bennie, Philip Rich, Shanteh Wale and Toni Paterson MW.
