Wine of the week: snap up this scintillating Aussie red

2021 Port Phillip Estate, Single Block Morillon Pinot Noir, Mornington Peninsula, Victoria, Australia

£37.95, jeroboams.co.uk

I am a huge fan of the wines from Port Phillip Estate, and at a recent Jeroboams tasting, Port Phillip’s MD Marco Gjergja was in London. He showed me a fabulous trio of his wines: 2023 Quartier Pinot Gris (£21.50), 2022 Red Hill Chardonnay (£25.50) and 2022 Balnarring Pinot Noir (£27.50). On any given week of the year, any of these wines could have sauntered into the headline spot on this page, given their ratio of sheer deliciousness/value for money! But, as I said farewell to Marco, he alerted me to a pair of “under the table” wines. This expression never fails to get the blood coursing through my veins, and Marco produced this week’s headline Morillon Pinot Noir and its sibling, 2021 Morillon Chardonnay (£34.95). Only three barrels were made of the chardy, and only 0.4 hectares of the oldest pinot noir on the property made it into my featured red!

Jeroboams have only 60 bottles of each wine, and I imagine they have earmarked it for posh London restaurants, but you can scupper this plan. Remember, Port Phillip sits in the same Gjergja portfolio as the more famous wines from Kooyong (many of which have been featured in my 100 Best Australian Wines Reports). While the

Port Phillip wines are not as well known in the UK as the Kooyongs, and the prices are half that of their more famous stablemates, they are made with the same care and attention.

Matthew Jukes is a winner of the International Wine & Spirit Competition’s Communicator of the Year (MatthewJukes.com).