Wynns Coonawarra Estate Black Label Cabernet Sauvignon 2023

Wynns likes to promote Black Label as “Australia’s benchmark Cabernet Sauvignon,” but it could also be called Australia’s greatest comfort wine. Year in, year out, it arrives in the glass and the drinker’s high expectations are always met – that’s so comforting. Even in relatively challenging cool, wet years like 2023 there is no denying the Black Label stamp: a deep concentration of ripe black fruit and spices in sync with some pretty smart oak. The ’23 vintage does bring a finer expression of Cabernet, less obvious mint and eucalypt than usual and more gentle florals and light herbals. Blackberry, cassis, black cherry, violet, briar, anise, dried leaf, crushed herbs – fresh and lively – work in harmony with French oak (30% new) to present a fully integrated youngster. Firm, fine tannins, as always, offer a seamless undercurrent, driving the wine long. As for drinking windows? Why not start tonight.

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