At a time when Grenache was considered un-fashionable Chester Osborn maintained a vigilant search for old vine McLaren Vale Grenache vineyards, showing faith in a variety that has been central to d’Arenberg since the very beginning.
His search unveiled a number of old bush vine and poorly maintained trellised vineyards in various states of disrepair.

Many of these ‘derelict’ vineyards were overgrown with native grasses and bracken ferns and weren’t being used for grape production—one was even being used to graze horses!
Restoring these vineyards has been a time consuming labour of love, and while they still have a slightly dishevelled appearance they are back producing very low yields of exceptional fruit.

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