Passel Estate Lot 71 Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon 2017

There’s a lot to like – even applaud – here. It’s a treat to see a seven-year-old Margaret River Cabernet still available for purchase. Doubly so when a top vintage and a wine’s ageing potential is so persuasively on show. The ’17 vintage was cooler, and it shows in a very fine expression of Cabernet Sauvignon, one with finesse and excellent natural balance. The vintage allows the fruit to sing, the winemaker encourages it with a sensitive use of oak. Violet, acacia, bush mint, black berries, plum and gentle woodsmoke aromas. The palate delivers ripe, well composed fruit with black fruits, plum and dark cherry in the lead, enhanced by dark cocoa, spice and fine tannins that run long and deep. A dry, leafy, herbal edge brings a clean finish.

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