Driftwood Single Site Margaret River Cabernet Sauvignon 2021

You look once, you look twice. Third time is a charm. You have to admire a red wine that opens up before your eyes. A couple of swishes and there it is, a tight essence of black wild berries, licorice, cocoa, with a dusty earthiness leading into cinnamon, briar, leaf. This ’21 Margaret River Cabernet is not so much plush as fine-lined, with sapid tannins forming a most secure, firm structure for now and for the future. It specialises in the slow reveal, the more time open, the more to explore. And it’s only just beginning its journey. Not the easiest of vintages – there were disease pressures – so you have to admire the quality of fruit, the delicate balance of baking spices to the earthy Aussie bush tones, the warmth of toasty oak and the slow build-up of flavour intensity as it nears the finish.

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