Briar Ridge Big Bully Cabernet Sauvignon 2021

If the name doesn’t appeal, the wine certainly will which hails from the Stonefields Vineyard in Wrattonbully. By Wrattonbully standards, this is a big wine: big in personality, on the bigger side alcohol-wise (14.7%) and super concentrated in fruit power. But a bully? Well, not really. To release some of that pent-up intensity, give your glass a swish or two and you’ll note the rise of some lovely aromatics – violet and blueberry – which bring added freshness and vitality. The wine is all the better for it. Wild berries, earth, briar, vanilla pod, cigar box aromas are deep and dark. On the palate it’s a solid, sturdy wine, sustained by a veritable fortress of Cabernet tannins. It’s going to love a lot more time in bottle, a lot more. Sitting in the background, patiently, are some attractive leafy, herbal characters in sage, rosemary and savoury jalapeno.

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