Best’s Great Western Young Vine Pinot Meunier 2023
- 95
- $45
- Drink by: 2024-2033
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We know what Best’s Old Vine Pinot Meunier can do. Give it 10, 20, 30 years and it will be a stunner. In the meantime, there is Best’s Young Vine Pinot Meunier to sate the appetite. There’s an intrinsic pepperiness to the 2023 vintage which is quite delightful, a real focus point for this drinker who loves a bit of pepperiness (but not too much) and the extra flavour appeal it can bring. Black pepper mingles with cherry, plum, cranberry, crushed leaf, dried herbs and spices as the wine works its way along a long line of fine tannin. This plummy, red fruited youngster has plenty of time up its sleeve, maybe not in the same realm as its Old Vine sibling, but it has immediate drinking enjoyment covered for now and over the next 8-10 years.
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.
