Swinging Bridge Hill Park Block 7 Reserve Chardonnay 2021

A wine that takes on the reserve title and means it. In fact, it also takes on the company’s title of white flagship wine, so it carries a lot on its vinous shoulders and, importantly, it delivers. This is a super fine expression of Chardonnay built around a purity of bristling cool climate acidity. Fruit is pristine in delicate aromas of lemon, nectarine, white peach and almond. As a very youthful four-year-old – hard to believe! – it’s quiet, concentrated and releases its considerable charms slowly.  It would not like over-chilling. Good line and length is assured thanks to cool climate acidity and fruit is slowly coaxed, building in between layers of almond meal, nougat and grilled cashews. It’s still very much early days for this little beauty.

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