Penfolds Bin 389 Cabernet Shiraz 1996

Jancis Robinson: I was alone, in a roomful of Penfolds veterans, to dislike this wine. And I went back to it, over and over, throughout the length of the tasting, to see if suddenly something would shift and I would 'get it'. I didn't. I found very little nose; terse, skinny, anxious tannins. A wine that tasted grumpy, attenuated, tough, flat. For the sake of perspective, Peter Gago described it as elegant, Matthew Jukes as 'surprisingly graceful in the end' and Neil Beckett loved it. I even went to look at what our team have said about it over the years, and scores range from 14 (!) to 17.5. So, it seems that it might be a capricious wine that divides opinion. I'm sticking with my score, but please bear all of the above in mind. 16/20