Passel Estate Margaret River Cabernet Sauvignon 2017

A fine-featured cabernet with Margaret River class written all over it. It’s one of those wines you just want to inhale over and over, taking in the sheer aromatic pleasure of it all. Where to start? Black fruits first up of the blackberry and blackcurrant kind, ripe and concentrated. There’s camphor, vanilla, cinnamon, too, lifted and engaging. Where the 2017 shiraz is showing its age, this is not the case with the ’17 cabernet. There is so much life and energy here. Rolls across the tongue supported by velvety, fine tannins with a terrific depth of flavour meting out black berries, a gentle leafiness  with an earthy allure. An added spicy touch of anise lifts. Classic shades of Margaret River cabernet and will age a treat.

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