Stella Bella Luminosa Cabernet Sauvignon 2020

Luminosa Cabernets are well recognised for their power and precision, succulence and structure. Those qualities remain the focus in the Luminosa 2020, but with added emphasis on structure. This is one taut, young red, still years away from drinking at its height. Pronounced tannins rule here with fruit still in expansion mode. The cellar and a long life await. Cocoa, charcoal, woodsy oak is quite the feature on the bouquet against a background of bramble, loganberry, eucalypt and earth. The region’s noteworthy Aussie bush scents and menthol play a strong card together with dried herbs throughout this wine. A little more restrained than previous Luminosa releases, the ’20 combines Cabernet earthy coolness – rhubarb and earth – with upfront Shiraz sweet fruit and toasty oak. Fruit, oak and tannins are running a little parallel to each other. Give it time and you will be rewarded.

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