Henschke Percival’s Mill Adelaide Hills Grüner Veltliner 2025

Planted in 2011 on ancient grey shales at Lenswood, the Grüner vines are just hitting their straps and revealing a crisp, elegant white. The Hills region is a natural for the grape which traditionally calls Austria home. The scent brings lime, green pear aromas with spiced apple and a light flourish of apple blossom florals. Very pretty and fine.  The palate introduces a layer of fresh green herbs which you often see in cool climate Grüner – chervil white pepper and sorrel – anchoring the wine with a sense of the soil, together with some saline and slate, mineral tang and refreshing lemon-lime bright flavours. Comes all crunchy and frisky in acidity, a display of youth. The question to drink now or later arises. Another year or so in bottle and that friskiness should settle and, with maturity, the flavours will really shine.

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