Riposte The Sabre Pinot Noir 2023

Adelaide Hills Pinot is in its element, glistening in red-red hues and carrying a lively perfume of red cherry, cranberry, earthy rhubarb, musk and pressed flowers. It’s quite a compact, lightly savoury, herbal-red berried, sinewy-tight pinot, pretty typically Hills Pinot in character despite this being one heck of a nerve-wracking kind of vintage. There was rain, lots of it. No matter, The Sabre cut through it all and arrives on the other side vivacious and delicious to boot. The palate explores dried herbs with rose hip, cranberry and cherry fruits in tow. The structure is interesting, it’s sinewy and earthy, dressed in savoury tannins. Finishes with some smooth vanillin oak. Moderate cellaring could be called for.

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