Pikes The Hill Block Cabernet 2021

It’s rare to see a Clare Valley Cabernet Sauvignon of such youth looking so complex, so elegant. Sourced from the Polish Hill River sub-region, high in altitude and blessed with shale, slate and mineral-strong soils, the area brings a sense of purity in fruit expression to many of its wines. This Cabernet is a strong case in point. From a top year, it’s singing in lively local scents: Aussie bush, mint, acacia, briar with dried rosemary. Gotta love the energy that the bush scents bring to the aromatic lift on the bouquet, transforming into a fully integrated palate with cassis, wild black berries, aniseed and gentle leafy herbals. A whisper of vanillin oak and pepper enhances, together with fine-cut tannins. Altogether, an elegant, medium-bodied Cabernet still coming together – feel free to give it more time in bottle – but showing so much style.

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