Tapanappa Tiers Vineyard Chardonnay 2024

Another superb Tiers Chardonnay highlighting the beauty achieved with the grape in the Adelaide Hills. Adjectives get a real work out with this wine. Ripe fruit is noted and while the alcohol suggests it might be bigger – 14.1% abv – it isn’t noted on the taste. In fact, it is a refined expression, fresh in a burst of lemon and grapefruit citrus, grilled grapefruit, toasted almond, baked quince and vanilla. It’s a tight wine, well composed but compact and, frankly, it is too early for total drinking enjoyment at this stage. Place it in the cellar and just watch it bloom. It’s a wine with poise but still very much in building mode. Brisk acidity with a citrus zest, quince-like tartness is well placed, balancing the impending richness promised of this wine. All is ready, it’s a fine addition to the Tiers roll call of top Chardonnays.

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