Top Margaret River wines from recent vintages

Peter Forrestal considers what makes this region of Western Australia so highly regarded, and recommends great wines for the cellar and for drinking, including Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Semillon-Sauvignon Blanc and even a Tempranillo.

Margaret River celebrated 50 years of winemaking in style in 2017; the region has never made better wines.

It’s arguably Australia’s premier Cabernet region, its Chardonnays are among the country’s finest, and many of these are world-class wines.

No one else in Australia is making better everyday whites than its Semillon-Sauvignon Blanc blends, and the experimentation of the past decade has led to a raft of Bordeaux blanc lookalikes that have critics and the general public salivating.

The show record for the wines of Margaret River in the past decade is stunning. There are some irritations too, such as a swag of young winemakers stirring up trouble and challenging orthodoxies, making small-batch wines that charm only sommeliers.

Still, it wasn’t so long ago that most of the region’s best producers were doing that kind of thing themselves: often working unconventionally to finesse their handcrafted wines.

Margaret River was legally delineated in 1996 following a blueprint of Australia’s foremost viticultural research scientist Dr John Gladstones. He responded to a request from Vanya Cullen and Keith Mugford in 1999 to draw up proposed sub-regional boundaries.

This has been the subject of much discussion by winemakers who have been keen to explore the possibilities of particular localities. And there has been similar interest in the production of single-site wines.

While there has been a great deal of experimentation across Australia with new grape varieties, this trend has not taken root in Margaret River. Tempranillo is an exception and there are some impressive examples of the variety. A few growers are attempting to revive interest in Chenin Blanc and helping to erase the memory of sweet Chenins of yesteryear.

The real key to the region’s success, however, has been its climate, with consistent wet winters and dry growing seasons. One has to go back to 2006 to find a difficult vintage – and even that produced many exemplary whites.

The character of Margaret River remains pretty much unchanged today as it was at its birth in the 1960s, with the majority of the wineries family-owned or driven by families. There is much more investment than before, but the region still boasts many small cellar doors to delight visitors. What has changed is the quality of accommodation, winery restaurants and tourist facilities – and consequently visitor numbers.

If you haven’t been to Margaret River, make a plan, and until then taste through a few of my 50 best buys.

 View all of Peter’s top Margaret River wines here

And you can also find a few examples tasted by other experts, including for our ‘best wines of 2017 feature’ and Australian Riesling panel tasting

Peter’s 10 top scorers:

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