Stonehaven Limited Vineyard Release Cabernet Sauvignon 2021

Padthaway-based brand, Stonehaven, is back. What was once owned by Constellation Wines is now under the guidance of family wine company, CW Wines. Solid releases such as this reserve Cabernet Sauvignon are a good sign for a bright future. What an inviting wine, youthful, punchy and fresh. It’s well defined, too. Couldn’t be anything other than Coonawarra Cabernet fruit hitting the tongue in blackberry-blueberry intensity, dried fruits, spice and those zingy herbals – oregano, thyme, a splash of cardamon – are delicious. The winemaker hasn’t pushed, hasn’t over-packed it with winemaking paraphernalia but rather allowed the fruit its head. Hence, oak is part of the seams that bind but no more. That approach is rewarded in a convincing, well-grounded Coonawarra Cabernet. There’s a lot to like here.

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