Parker Estate First Growth 2021

This is another Do I? or Don’t I? Kind of wine from Parker Estate. To open now is to enjoy a Cabernet Sauvignon already in balance early in its life. It’s slow moving, building with time in the glass and with contact with air, but once it’s ready to go, it’s got it, looking very much in the regional zone. Enticing black fruits to the fore, crushed herbs and leaves, red earth with blackstrap liquorice which takes the wine long into the finish. Thoroughly ripened, fruit is well supported by oak and woody spices which remain a background note that sits comfortably with the wine, another layer to explore in what is a complex young beauty. Even tannins seal the deal. Yes, you can drink now. You can also drink later.

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