Riposte Adelaide Hills The Pinot 2024

There is a sentence that stays with the drinker. It is to be found on the back label of this wine and it’s from winemaker, Tim Knappstein. “This is the Pinot I have wanted to make for 35 years.” The temptation is to write it off as a marketing ploy except Knappstein never succumbs to hyperbole, ever. The ’24 vintage created the circumstances for a special, exceptional wine. The Knappstein father-and-son winemakers have delivered. Arrives in solid, deep crimson hues. The scent moves between the spice, the herbals and the enticingly aromatic wrapped in dark berries and plums: allspice, cinnamon, wild herbs, rose petal, violet, fennel and green stemmy leaves. The aroma is positively sexy! The palate is intense, herbal-edged and dark spiced. Layers of flavour are rooted in the soil – earth, beetroot, dried leaves, undergrowth – and tannin-focused, adding a degree of seriousness and, make no mistake, this is definitely one serious Pinot. Runs smoothly, darkly, savoury influenced and with distinction. Super complex. Limited release: 900 bottles produced.

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