Howard Park Arbor Novae Chenin Blanc 2022

You’ve got to love a wine that not only tastes superb but does its bit for the planet. For each bottle of Howard Park’s Arbor Novae Chenin Blanc sold, $1.50 will go to Carbon Positive Australia to support tree planting and landscape restoration. Arbor novae – “new trees” in Latin – is a showcase for one of Margaret River’s great white secrets, Chenin Blanc. A lovely, expressive wine, it makes you wonder why we don’t see more Margs Chenin made. Creates an immediate strong first impression with the scent of deep honeysuckle, citrus, lemon curd and spiced apple rising from the glass. Nails the balance of Chenin’s almost opulent mouthfeel and clean Chenin flavours against a background of bright acid drive. Really drills home the grape’s strengths, its honeyed melon, citrus intensity, green apple pucker, all wrapped in nutty oak. A big, warm hug of a wine.

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