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One to watch: Margaret River’s Trait Wines
The reputation of Trait Wines, a boutique Margaret River producer, has risen fast in the last few years, thanks to the powerful combination of an historic site and its fully committed custodians.
Warren and Gillian Lilleyman had no idea what they were doing when they planted a vineyard in Margaret River in southwest Western Australia in 1988.
The first vines in the region had only gone in the ground two decades earlier.
Like the region’s pioneer Tom Cullity, Warren was a doctor – an amateur enthusiast with no prior experience in the world of wine. And yet the couple – who live next to the vineyard and still own it – planted a near-perfect parcel of vines.
‘They just nailed it,’ says Theo Truyts – he and his wife Clare Trythall are the current custodians of the 2.7ha site.
Although the Lilleymans received some guidance from Dr Mike Peterkin (who founded nearby Pierro winery and planted the first vines there in 1980), there seems to have been a lot of luck involved.
Perched on a gentle slope, with richer soils at the foot turning into poorer gravel-loam as you cross the vineyard, it sits at the northwestern edge of Wooditjup National Park, not far outside the town of Margaret River itself.
The vines, many of which are now more than 35 years old, are producing exceptional fruit – in particular Chardonnay (all GinGin, the most common clone in Margaret River, which produces berries of various sizes, lending particular concentration and complexity to wine), but also tiny parcels of Sauvignon Blanc, Chenin Blanc and Semillon.
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Right place, right time
(Image credit: Paris Hawken Photography)
But the vineyard very nearly disappeared. For a decade, it was leased by Pierro, where Theo used to work, and he saw the quality of fruit the site produced year in, year out.
When he heard in May 2019 that Pierro was giving it up, the vineyard’s fate was uncertain.
The site is painstaking to farm, with the relatively tight 1m x 1.8m vine spacing (reflective of Peterkin’s approach at Pierro) meaning that everything has to be done by hand.
‘It’s just close enough that you can’t do anything with a machine,’ says Theo, laughing. And the age of the vines means the yields are low. Few find such a challenge economically appealing. Theo, however, did.
He firmly believed that it was an important part of Margaret River’s wine heritage that shouldn’t be lost.
Clare evidently knew what was coming (‘You were primed,’ she says, smiling as she recalls her husband’s predictability) and together they decided to take the plunge: they signed the lease, thereby securing the site’s future, and created Trait Wines with the 2019 vintage.
Hard graft
(Image credit: Paris Hawken Photography)
Born in South Africa, Theo has made wine around the world (his impressive CV includes names such as Yves Cuilleron in the northern Rhône, Hartford Family in California and Vasse Felix in Margaret River, alongside Pierro) and settled in Margaret River for good after meeting Clare, who’s British but was born in Japan and spent her early years in Asia, with parents in the shipping trade.
Theo still works full-time at Wildberry Springs, while Clare remains a doctor in emergency medicine – and then there’s the small matter of three young boys and Bertie, the adorably scruffy Labradoodle that completes the family.
Soon after they took the site on, the pandemic hit – not exactly easing them into the project. In late 2020, Theo, Clare and her sister Laura grafted 0.3ha of Sauvignon Blanc over to Chardonnay by hand.
Without the usual influx of labour at the subsequent harvest, Clare recruited medical students to come help pick, bussing them in from Busselton further north. Theo set to work nurturing the site and its soils, which are already showing a notable uptick in health.
The Trait approach is, in a word, ‘pragmatic’: working with what they can to make the most of the vineyard, which is almost entirely worked by hand.
They’re buying in additional parcels to make a little red and rosé, with Cabernet Sauvignon and Grenache, so far, to complement the whites made from their own vines.
The winemaking is, Theo tells me, ‘supersimple’. Everything they do is about letting the site shine through – while also wanting to make sure that their wines can age.
Proudly independent
Trait doesn’t have its own winery – the wines are currently made at Aravina Estate in Yallingup.
Theo and Clare are not bankrolled by other ventures or outside investors; the funding here is all blood, sweat and tears. Pair all of that with a special vineyard and you have something rather extraordinary.
The way in which the duo talks about the vineyard and the winemaking reveals just how much they care about the project – and how much they’re pouring into it.
And the results are already exciting. They may only be producing 10,000 bottles a year in all, but the wines are rapidly earning a reputation in Australia – and soon, no doubt, beyond.
Trait, Chardonnay, Margaret River, Western Australia, Australia 2022
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Sophie Thorpe is a London-based wine writer, largely writing in-house for merchant Fine & Rare. The winner of the 2021 Guild of Food Writers Drinks Writing Award and an MW student, her writing can be found at firstpress.uk.
