Tapanappa Tiers Vineyard Chardonnay 2017

How well does a top Australian Chardonnay age? Here’s your answer. This is a wine boasting complexity plus. Eight years old and it is still very much on a journey of discovery and the journey is far from over. There is some development, some richness, but there is also a gorgeous core of bright fruit: yellow peach, nectarine, Asian pear dressed in pretty white florals and citrus blossom with a touch of crème fraiche and vanillin oak – all together, harmonious, round and complex. The oak takes it up to the fruit – this is a winemaker’s wine, after all – with a marriage of oak and ripe stone fruits and citrus producing an incredible array of flavours and textures. Has yonks to go. Available to Tapanappa club members only,

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