Schubert Estate Le Jars Blanc Viognier 2018

In the Schubert style with richness aplenty as it works its way across the vast Viognier varietal landscape. There’s a feeling of development here. You see it in the mid-yellow colour. You smell the aromas of apricot, honey, orange blossom and musk, and you sense it; it’s ripe and ready to be enjoyed. A cool fermentation in French barriques followed by four months ageing in oak broadens the appeal of the wine, providing an unctuous – if not, obviously oak – background and texture for the palate with its glacé apricot, yellow peach and nectarine fruit intensity.  Freshness is delivered but the wine still remains on the rich side. Schubert grafted Viognier onto Semillon vines in 1999. The decision, as it turns out, was a smart one.

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