Anselmi Realda Cabernet Sauvignon 2019

Like a walk through the alpine fields of northern Italy, the Realda Cabernet boasts some bewitching mountain wild herbs together with the more familiar dried oregano, sage, wrapped around plentiful, black-hearted berries. And there’s more – Cabernet-strong leafiness, earth, anise, pipe tobacco and chocolate. Firm, oak-derived tannins rule the middle-palate, well-structured and providing Italian-style cherry pip dryness which, to an Australian palate, might appear quite astringent and drying. Clearly, this is an Italian-style red intended not only for matching with a range of foods, but destined for further ageing. You don’t see a lot of Cabernet grown in the Veneto, so this makes Realda a wine different to the usual red wine pack from this part of the world. Under Diam cork.

Jeni Port

Wine critic at Winepilot

Jeni Port is one of Australia’s top wine communicators. Based in Melbourne, Jeni created the first wine column in the (then) Sun News-Pictorial before moving over to The Age and becoming that paper’s longest-serving wine writer. Over the years she has written for most Australian wine magazines and these days calls WinePilot home. She is also a Tasting Panel member on the Halliday Wine Companion. She was named Wine Communicator of the Year and Legend of the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival in 2014 and in 2018 Legend of the Vine. She is a founding board member of Australian Women In Wine and is the co-deputy chair of Australia’s Wine List of the Year Awards and China’s Wine List of the Year Awards.

Wine writer and critic