Yallingup is the kind of place I shouldn’t like. The wealth on display from the (generally empty) hillside homes is strangely discomforting, reminiscent of the wasteful opulence of Perths beachside suburbs if you drive Northbound from City Beach. Down the hill, the kids in the playground have long hair and names like ‘River’ or ‘Zephyr’ or ‘Avalon’. The zen on their parents faces as they come in from the surf evokes in me a petty jealously – what a lifestyle! Yet is a place I don’t fit in, don’t particularly want to fit in & perhaps that’s exactly why I like it. As an outsider it is all so far out of my comfort zone that I can enjoy it with simplicity of thought, blissfully detached from this other world and simply enjoying vicariously those who are in basking their natural environment. The beauty of the place is similarly confronting: mesmeric waves gleefully challenged daily by the skill and bravery of the surfers chasing fleeting moments, or simply swimming in the ocean seemingly in the shadow of the dramatic cliffs to the North. The whole experience of the place is overwhelming until you thankfully realise it is so foreign & utopian that it’s probably not real.
Somewhat ironic then, perhaps, that after an early finish to harvest we made a brief pilgrimage to the ‘down south’ paradise that is Yallingup only to encounter many of the things that make life relatively challenging back home. Flies, spiders, a snake & howling winds all made unwelcome cameos, followed by some horrible fires that began burning the day we were leaving. A reminder that come summer time, there is no complete escaping of ‘Australia’ from within it & only differing degrees of our harshest elements are on offer. In that context, Yallingup beach is still as good as it gets.
Proximity to the vineyards is an added bonus. Since we’ve had children my lust for cellar door tastings has waned considerably, not least because drinking through a disappointing range of wines and then politely buying a bottle really can be disheartening & expensive. So on this brief sojourn we only tasted before our lunches & in places of known quality.
If Margaret River were going to anoint a single icon winery, Vasse Felix makes the best case to assume that mantle. Recent vineyard acquisitions make it amongst the largest, it was the first to plant vines in the region, it has the finest restaurant & is situated in a superb and iconic location.
We managed to taste a few wines before lunch (which was 8/10 – sometimes it’s 10/10). The quality of the Chardonnay is metronomic: pick any level or any year and you’ll get a very reliable wine that treads the absolute middle ground stylistically. I’ve never been ‘wowed’, nor tasted a wine I wouldn’t be more than happy to own – make of that what you will. The Filius range in the reds follows this lead: you will get a reliable amount of fruit, decent value & typicity within what you’d expect from a Margaret River wine.
The Shiraz remains one of the more interesting projects in Margaret River: not for what is in the bottle, but rather the journey they have been on to make a serious wine befitting the old vines & aspirational price tag. In my early days of tasting here the goal seemed to be power. The 2007, for example could have easily been mistaken for a clumsy Barossan wine. Since around 2010, it has been a palatable, scaled back medium bodied wine with restrained character that tastes more of Margaret River than of Shiraz. The journey has since taken another interesting turn, with the Shiraz now masquerading as a ‘cool climate’ wine. Forgive me, but it is always slightly amusing to hear this pitch from producers in Margaret River, describing their Shiraz as ‘Northern Rhone like’ when they seldom display anything resembling this region nor from a cooler climate. It’s hard to take issue with the effort though at Vasse, with some parcels apparently undergoing carbonic maceration & the word ‘Syrah’ now gracing the label. The wine, by the way, is good (possibly quite good), and it will be interesting to see how it continues to evolve from here.
The 2018 Vasse Felix Estate Cabernet was predictably drinkable, there seems to be just a bit of tobacco & black olive flavours sneaking in to this wine which I really enjoyed. The acidity tastes a fraction manufactured to me: I’d be interested to have a closer look at the details of the winemaking. This is a wine, blended from many different vineyards and micro-climates, that needs to be reliable, and in that pursuit the recipe succeeds. It’ll last a while too. The 2017 Tom Cullity didn’t seem much of a step up to be honest – restricted by the vintage perhaps? ‘Elegance over power’ works as a concept when a wine is particularly beautiful, lengthy & with perfect dimensions but I did not quite find this here. Rather, this is a good, medium bodied wine that on the day didn’t do enough to convince me this label deserves its self-appointed ‘top tier’ status just yet. I hear on good authority that the 2018 is really something else & I think I’ll buy a bottle or two to put away so I can assess with some bottle age in a decade or so. All in all, a good selection of wines as you’d expect.
The previous day we made it to Flutes at Brookland Valley, which remains one my favourite ‘off the radar’ restaurants in the region. Here the Wilyabrup brook passes through, expanding on the back of a basic dam wall to leave a sizable & beautiful lake. Bliss. The food is always very good & like the service, is refreshingly unpretentious. On top of that the prices are more than reasonable: what more do you want? Also, fortuitously, the cellar door has merged with Houghton (both owned by Accolade) & this is now a good spot to taste some of the best wines WA can produce. I was able to taste the top end reds & rather rudely, took some brief notes (no scores) in my phone under the tasting bench.
Brookland Valley 2017 Estate Cabernet Merlot.
What a funny vintage 2017 is in Wilyabrup. The heavy hitters (think Moss Wood, Woodlands) are really scaled back in the power – lean and easy going, but elsewhere is hard to generalise and quality seems to be a wine to wine prospect. This effort had plenty of plush fruit & was drinking well on the day. Not particularly serious, nor challenging the stars of the region but great for what it is & I bought a couple to drink over the short term.
Brookland Valley 2017 Reserve
A vineyard selection from the same plot (located where the restaurant is). This is a bit more structured and proper, the flavours are there with plenty of Wilyabrup typicity. A bit heavy on the blackcurrant perhaps, but this will no doubt age very well & have plenty to offer for those who invest. I like the style of the Brookland Valley reds, they seem off the radar for many perhaps because of the Accolade factor & I’m going to keep an eye out for the 18 of this label.
Houghton CW Ferguson 2017
This tasted like it had been open a while. Decent aromatic profile. Tannic but attractive. It didn’t manage to seduce me though a decade-plus in the cellar might change that.
Houghton Jack Mann 2019
One of my favourite wines, this is surely the pinnacle of WA cabernet outside Margaret River (the fruit comes from the Justin vineyard in Frankland River). The 19 was hard to get a read on for me. Not a lot of aromatics but precise and predictably tight. Certainly not singing today: kudos to anyone who can get a read on these types of wines so young without plenty of air. I think you could trust the label here though if this is one you generally ‘put away for a bit’ – the price is just a little bit restrictive for me.
The Wine Accomplice 