Riddoch Coonawarra The Representative Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot 2021
- 91
- $40
- Drink by: 2023-2033
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High on the alcohol side – 15% – for a Coonawarra Cabernet-led red but boasting fruit power up to the task. The bouquet begins with a flurry of smoky, toasty vanillin oak, black fruits and lifted aromatics in rose and bayleaf. The palate gets down and serious in dark fruits, red berries, cherry and plum, earth and briar with some of Merlot’s sweeter notes. A wine to remind drinkers what they have been missing out on now that Cabernet Merlot blends aren’t quite as popular as they used to be. Why is that, exactly? Well-seasoned in French and American oak and in balance, it finishes with a subtle flourish.
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.
