2024 Vanguardist Grenache, McLaren Vale

Halliday Top 100 Wines 2026

The Vanguardist calling card, the defining wine. Deeply savoury and intense, layered, detailed, chiselled, seriously complex. The vintage conditions were a little easier in '24 than '23, with a little more warmth, but this continues the Vanguardist upward trajectory with a theme of transparency, elegance and refined detail. Dehydrated cranberry and goji, barberry, amaro herbs and spicing, dried citrus peel, rye, caraway, pumpernickel, sun-warmed terracotta, pressed wildflowers. A sour-fruited tension to flavour and structure runs through it. It’s a wine that is so captivating on the nose, so intense and layered, that it is almost enough as is. But the palate, the chewy, pithy, silty, sandy tannins, the tamarind acidity, the haunting persistence … Another beautifully beguiling world-class grenache from Mr Corbett. Bravo. Drink to 2039.

97+ points Marcus Ellis for Halliday Wine Companion, February 2026

The 2024 Grenache is perfumed and aromatic, leading with saturated rose petals, pomegranate, raspberry and licorice, alongside cracked timut peppercorns (in the way that timut pepper leads with pink grapefruit, it is fresh, with black tea, sage, resin and is delicate, singular). The tannins are silky and fine; they build over the course of drinking, through the middle palate, the crescendo and the finish. This is more powerful than I expected, despite what I know of the (in the end, magnificent) 2024 vintage, though the tannins are not as prominent as I expected—no bad thing. This is all about the tannins, as all great Grenache is, and it is the last impression on the palate once the wine is gone. The fruit was handpicked over three different days (10 days apart), with reduced yields from the 2023 vintage. It was made with around two-thirds whole bunches, with a long and slow fermentation over five weeks and matured for 17 months in two 2,200-liter Slavonian oak foudres (seven years old). This is a satiating, layered rendition of Vanguardist Grenache, and the highlight is the tannins.

97 points Erin Larkin for The Wine Advocate, June 2026

This is matured in two 22HL Slavonian foudre, which are now seven years old. Two thirds whole bunch. From the Rende Vineyard in Blewitt Springs, which is now over 55 years old. This is a lighter, more frisky expression of Vanguardist Grenache, in the way of 2023, though with a bit more oomph, but less richness, tannin and stuffing than, say, 2019 and 2021. Not a comment on quality, more a guide to style. Raspberry, cherry, almond, spice, slight liquorice richness, dried roses. Medium-bodied, spicy, cherry and raspberry, savoury and gently earthy, a fine grainy richness to tannin, a cranberry freshness to acidity, with a nutty strawberry and spice finish of excellent length. Wonderful finesse and perfume here. Give it a couple more years to come up.

96 points Gary Walsh for The Wine Front

The 2024 vintage is the tenth release of the Vanguardist Grenache as a single vineyard wine with fruit sourced from the highly regarded Rende vineyard.

The handpicked fruit was picked across three days in the first half of March. A significant two-thirds of the fruit was kept as whole bunches for the long and slow five-week fermentation, after which the wine was pressed off the skins for a seventeen-month maturation in two 2,200-liter Slavonian oak foudre that at the time were seven years old. Following this two-winter rest, the wine was blended and racked in preparation of bottling that took place in December 2025, with a modest 28ppm protection from sulphur.

About this producer

Vanguardist was established in 2014 by New Zealand-born Michael Corbett with Burgundian Edouard Maurisset-Latour and his wife Ali.

Michael remains the driving force behind the label today, embracing a philosophy of precision, elegance, and transparency that aims to present wines that emphasize perfume and natural acidity, with complex tannins often a highlight.

At the heart of it all is the Rende Vineyard in Blewitt Springs. Planted in the late-1960s, Vanguardist farms and manages this eight-hectare site of dry grown bush vines standing in deep Maslin sands on behalf of its owners, the Rende family.

Corbett also collaborates with other premium, sustainable and organic/biodynamic vineyards in the regions and occasionally sources small, highly curated parcels from growers in other regions of South Australia.