Tapanappa Foggy Hill Vineyard Pinot Noir 2025

One of the warmest, earliest and dried vintages in living memory and just look at the result – amazing! Winemaker versus nature is always a delicate battle, but it looks like in ’25, the winemaker won the day, or that’s how it tastes. How else do you describe the full, expressive nature of the ’25 Pinot matched to a fine-edged, well structured frame? The florals arrive early, lavender, iris, rose, pressed flowers mingling with scents of cherry, plum, raspberry and herbs. It’s a pretty effortless move from the scent to the palate with plum and berry fruit flavours running deep amid a noted presence of florals with orange peel and background herbs and earth – just tantalising hints that add one more layer of complexity. Those firm, fine tannins add phenolic grip and together with a bright freshness of acidity, this young Pinot Noir truly shines and should do so for more time to come.

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