The 6-month "grace period" is still there.
Suppose you last did approaches in December, 2014. Then you are current for the following 6 calendar months, until midnight June 30, 2015.
On July 1, 2015, you are not current anymore. For the next six months (until December 31, 2015) you can regain currency by doing approaches, holds, etc., with a safety pilot. This is the "grace period": you have six months to regain your currency.
But if you didn't renew your instrument currency by December 2015, then on January 1, 2016 you've been out of currency for 6 months (since July 1, 2015). It's now more than 12 months since you last did approaches. In this case, per 61.57(d) you must now pass an Instrument Proficiency Check to become current again.