Pindarie Schoff’s Hill Cabernet Sauvignon 2021

Barossa cabernet + a little TLC = one stylish wine. You have to get just a little excited when you come upon a Barossa Cabernet that shows just how good the region can be with the grape. Schoff’s Hill combines Barossa warmth and generosity, as you might expect, but with an additional degree of complexity of flavour, nicely measured tannins and marvellous length. Blackberry with black olive leading into tapenade with dried herbs stoke the bouquet with a generous helping of chocolate and French oak infused cigar-like smokiness. It allows the grape to walk tall on the palate in sweet, concentrated fruit with tannin binding everything tight, but not too much. Earth, a little leather with an additional savoury tapenade influence are heightened by plenty of lively spice – cinnamon, nutmeg, anise – with just a touch of mint, and what length!

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