Penfolds Grange Bin 95 2021

There will be higher than usual expectations associated with the 2021 Grange. It was undoubtedly a stellar vintage across South Australia noted as exceptional by many producers, no more so than in Grange’s pick of fruit from the Barossa Valley, McLaren Vale and Clare Valley. Powerful yet elegant, finely structured but firm, the ’21 will particularly please those who prefer poise and style over brute force. Inky, dense, impenetrable.  Resolutely ripe in aromas of black fruits of every kind, dark bitter chocolate, liquorice blocks, ground coffee, dried earth, pan juices, tapenade and lifted violet aromatics. While it’s working on the kind of seamless harmony we come to expect with age, the richness of fruit and spices is joined by a layer of resinous oak and savoury notes of undergrowth, truffle. The addition of 6% Cabernet Sauvignon is slightly more (it’s a relative thing) than some previous Granges. Hard to tell its contribution but those tannins are impressively slatey and fine. Altogether, a Grange with less oomph and more fineness with an underlying power.

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