Juniper Estate Cornerstone Wilyabrup Cabernet Sauvignon 2018

Margaret River Cabernet at the top of its game. It has some help, just a smidge, from Malbec (3.8%) and Cabernet Franc (1.9%) but the core essentials of Cabernet Sauvignon remain strong and beautifully presented. Lifted florals and black berry fruit aromas blend with chocolate and spice. It’s an intensely fragrant introduction. The Cornerstone palate is elegant, composed and quietly powerful, boasting multiple layers in spice, black fruits, cassis, vanilla pod, earth and bonded seamlessly in ripe and polished tannins. Time in oak – 17 months in French barriques, 45% new – imparts a discreet but impressive structure. Six years old and humming along full of spark like a youngster. And it’s got time on its side. Barely showing its age, it’s going to last a long, 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