Juniper Estate Cornerstone Karridale Chardonnay 2021

Perfectly captures the purity of fruit and the kind of linear structure we associate with the Great Southern region. There is a natural restraint which translates into a wine of tremendous line and length that runs long. Scintillating stuff! Lime, lemon, stone fruit aromas with hints of preserved lemon, quince and a dusting of honeysuckle florals. Arrives with an innate sense of balance, fine in texture and driven by tangy lemony acidity. The fruit is sunny but not over-ripe, firmly fixed in citrus with quince, white peach and enhanced by oak-defined mealiness and complexity. There’s a tension here, a tautness, an interplay with acidity that is both lip-smackingly zesty and the groundwork for an extended time in bottle. And it lingers . .  a long time

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