Penfolds at Your Service: Australian Winery Launches New Members-Only Concierge Service and U.S. Tour With Leading Wine Culture Raconteurs

    NEW YORK, Sept. 27 /PRNewswire/ -- Penfolds, the leading Australian
 winemaker, announces PenfoldsVIP.com, a wine club that takes a different
 approach to wine culture.
     Officially launching October 1st, 2006, PenfoldsVIP.com will offer wine
 enthusiasts the opportunity to have exclusive annual membership to Penfolds
 Grange VIP -- a full personal concierge service -- and access to the brands
 intimate four-city tour of evenings with contemporary wine raconteurs.
     "We've created PenfoldsVIP.com because wine culture is about so much
 more than wine -- the concierge service and our new events are testament to
 this. We are raising the bar on typical wine clubs," said Peter Gago, Chief
 Winemaker, Penfolds and Wine Enthusiast's 2005 Winemaker of the Year.
     Named after Australia's most prestigious wine, Penfolds Grange VIP is a
 new 24 hours a day, seven days a week service that aims to cater to
 members' every whim. The service is like having your own personal assistant
 with impeccable connections around the globe. Celebrities and power brokers
 alike use concierge services to meet their every need allowing time to
 enjoy the finer things in life. Whether it's house cleaning or dog walking,
 impossible to get restaurant reservations, chartering a yacht or tracking
 down a hard to find wine, no request is too small or too obscure.
     For more information on how to apply for a free one-year membership to
 Penfolds Grange VIP, vinophiles can log on to PenfoldsVIP.com. Like any
 good vintage, Mother Nature will play a hand in who gets in to Penfolds
 Grange VIP as members are selected at random. Applications for membership
 will be accepted from October 1st - December 1st 2006. Successful
 applicants will be notified in writing.
     To kick off the four-city tour, oenophile and author Jay McInerney
 talks with Penfolds Chief Winemaker Peter Gago in New York on Thursday
 October 12, 2006. For the first time, Gago will share excerpts from
 personal diaries of his worldwide adventures as Penfolds winemaker, from
 the many famous wine fans he meets such actor Leonardo DiCaprio, to sharing
 wine jokes with political dignitaries, and his friendship with Tool and A
 Perfect Circle (APC) lead singer and wine collector Maynard James Keenan.
 Gago's style to making and talking about wine is unconventional,
 approachable, informal and sociable, and for the lucky few, he'll be
 uncorking a bottle of Penfolds Grange, Australia's most prestigious wine.
     Log on to PenfoldsVIP.com to view a broadcast of this special event on
 Monday, October 16, 2006 and to find out about upcoming events in the
 series.
     About Penfolds
     Penfolds, Australia's most esteemed winery, consistently wins medals
 and garners high ratings and accolades both in Australia and abroad.
 Penfolds has multiple ranges of wines available in the Americas, delivering
 greatness at a variety of price points. Penfolds also makes ultra-premium
 wines including the iconic Penfolds Grange, overseen by Chief Winemaker
 Peter Gago. The 2001 vintage of Penfolds Grange was released in May 2006
 and is available at top restaurants and selected fine wine stores
 nationwide. For more information, go to www.penfoldsvip.com
     Peter Gago
     Peter Gago is the Chief Winemaker of Penfolds. He joined the company in
 1989 and started his tenure making sparkling wine, then reds, and served as
 Penfolds Red Wine Oenologist before being appointed Penfolds Chief
 Winemaker, in July 2002. Peter took over the mantle from his long-time
 friend and colleague, John Duval, making him the fourth winemaker to be
 responsible for Penfolds' icon wine, Grange.
     Gago has also co-authored three books with Dr. Patrick Iland:
 "Discovering Australian Wine - A Taster's Guide" 1995, "Australian Wine -
 From the Vine to the Glass" 1997 and "Australian Wines - Tastes and Styles"
 2003.
     Gago travels extensively, visiting every continent to introduce people
 to Penfolds and share his love of wine through tastings, master classes and
 re-corking clinics -- a unique service created by Penfolds to preserve the
 life of their collectable wines.
     Jay McInerney
     McInerney is the author of seven novels, including Bright Lights, Big
 City, his best-selling 1984 debut that was cited by Time Magazine in 2006
 as one of nine generation-defining novels of the twentieth century.
 McInerney has written a number of novels since then, including his most
 recent, The Good Life. He is an accomplished magazine and newspaper
 columnist and has been writing a monthly wine column for House and Garden
 since 1996. Many of his columns were collected for his book Bacchus and Me:
 Adventures in the Wine Cellar, and a second book on wine, A Hedonist in the
 Cellar, is due in October. This year McInerney won the James Beard MFK
 Fisher Award for Distinguished Writing.
 
 

SOURCE Penfolds