The Lane Provenance Gamay 2022

It is good to see Gamay, the grape of Beaujolais, making its mark in the cool Adelaide Hills region. Light in tannin, the emphasis with Gamay is always on the fruit and there’s plenty of lovely fruit here. Eye-catching iridescent purple – you’d buy it on colour alone. Complex, youthful aromas of black cherry, mulberry, oregano, thyme, redcurrant and pepper. Multi-layered, featuring a little undergrowth/vegetative here, a soft, plummy-ness there, accompanied by spice. So approachable, enjoyable now, with a lively sour cherry tartness to close, a nice contrast following on from the smooth middle palate. It would be interesting to see how it ages, as some serious Beaujolais are more than capable of. A serious price, a serious wine.

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