A Wine Lover's Week

A week in this region is what wine asks for. A weekend is a sampler; three days is a tour. A week is when you start to drink the same wine twice and understand what the region actually does.

I've been here since 1982. The wine industry was barely a decade old when I arrived. Vasse Felix had planted in 1967 and there were maybe a dozen vineyards. Today there are around two hundred. I've watched it grow, I've eaten at the cellar doors, and I've made furniture for a few of them along the way. Here's the week I'd recommend if you've come for the wine and you want to do it properly.

Photo: Vasse Felix, CC BY-SA 2.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Don't try to do anything ambitious on day one. The drive from Perth is three hours and the wine takes some adjusting if you've been drinking from elsewhere.

Check in, walk around wherever you're staying, find dinner. Based in Dunsborough or Yallingup, walk into town and eat something simple. Pub food, local fish, an early night. Drink one bottle of something local with dinner: not a tasting flight, not a complicated wine, just a clean Sauvignon Blanc or Chenin to set the baseline.

The mistake people make is starting at full pace on day one. You've got six more days.

Spend Tuesday with the founding wineries. Vasse Felix in the morning for the cellar door, then lunch on site. It's still the benchmark for a winery restaurant in the region. You can book lunch at Vasse Felix online, and you should.

After lunch, drive ten minutes to Cullen Wines for a tasting. Cullen is the other early planter. Vanya Cullen has been making biodynamic wine here since the 1970s and her Diana Madeline cabernet is one of the most serious wines in Australia. The tasting room is quiet and the staff actually know what they're talking about.

That's enough for Tuesday. Two cellar doors, one meal, time to think. Go back, sit in the garden, write down what you tasted.

the cellar doors near Yallingup

Wednesday is the day to see what the region is doing now, not what it did first.

Voyager Estate in the morning. The architecture is Cape Dutch and the gardens are absurd but the wines are seriously good, particularly the chardonnay and the cabernet blends. They do a degustation lunch that pairs eight courses with wines. Do it here if you only do one degustation in the week. It's a long lunch (three hours minimum) so block out the afternoon.

For a less elaborate day, swap Voyager for Leeuwin Estate which has the same level of seriousness in a less polished setting. The Leeuwin Art Series chardonnay is the wine to taste.

Don't do anything after Voyager or Leeuwin. The day is the meal.

Photo: Stuart Sevastos, CC BY 2.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Halfway through the week, take a day off the cellar doors. Your palate needs it and so does your liver.

Drive up to Cape Naturaliste in the morning. Walk the lighthouse to Sugarloaf section of the Cape to Cape track (about 90 minutes return) and look at the coast properly without thinking about wine.

day walks off the Cape to Cape

Lunch somewhere simple. The Common in Dunsborough for eggs and coffee, or a takeaway from one of the bakeries.

Afternoon at the beach. Smiths Beach or Meelup, depending on the swell. Wash off in the ocean, sit on the sand, don't drink anything stronger than coffee. You're saving yourself for the second half of the week.

For dinner, cook in if you can. Otherwise, somewhere local that doesn't require dressing up.

Thursday is the right day to come past the gallery. The cellar doors all close around 5pm and so do we, but you can swing in mid-afternoon between the beach and dinner. The building is jarrah and southwest limestone — same materials as everything else around here, just put together differently. Open most days till 5pm.

A directions note: Google Maps sometimes wants to send you to Blythe Rd via Wildwood Rd. Stay on Bussell Hwy, turn at the Carbunup store, then Blythe Rd. Saves you a wrong turn.

Friday spend in the northern part of the wine region, closer to the coast, closer to Yallingup. These wineries get less of the touring traffic than the central Margaret River cluster and they reward the visit.

Clairault Streicker for a long lunch. The Chenin and the Sauvignon Blanc are excellent and the lunch menu paces itself well. I usually drink the Chenin with whatever fish is on the menu. Book ahead. Friday lunch fills up.

Clairault Streicker is on the Caves Rd side and the drive there from Yallingup is pretty.

After lunch, Wills Domain for a tasting. The Wills lookout dining room has the best view of any winery in the region (you can see across the valley and out to the coast) and even if you've eaten you can take a tasting flight on the deck. The Wills wines lean towards the cooler-climate end of the region's spectrum and the Pinot Noir surprised me the first time I tried it. Worth a serious taste. Wills Domain Yallingup takes bookings online.

End the day at Aravina Estate for an early dinner. Aravina is the right size for a relaxed evening, not too polished, not too rustic, and they have a vintage car museum on site if you're inclined that way. Their wines are clean and well-made and the food matches them properly. Aravina Estate is a fifteen-minute drive from Yallingup.

Photo: Lasthib, CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Saturday morning, get to the Margaret River Farmers Market by 9am. It runs at the Margaret River Education Campus on Bussell Hwy from about 8am to noon. Forty stalls, all local: bread, cheese, smoked fish, olives, eggs, vegetables, coffee. This is where the wine region's food economy actually lives.

Buy lunch ingredients. Buy dinner ingredients. Talk to the people behind the stalls. Most of them grow the stuff themselves.

the cellar-door-food list

In the afternoon, visit two or three of the smaller, less-touristed wineries. The region has dozens of small family operations that don't get the bus traffic. Brookland Valley, Stella Bella, Howard Park. Any of these. Choose by location or by which wine you've enjoyed most through the week. Tastings are casual at the smaller places and you'll often end up talking to whoever made the wine.

Saturday evening, cook what you bought at the market. Drink one of the wines you've discovered through the week. Sit outside if the weather is right.

Being energized by what the region has to offer and making lifelong memories. That's what a week here does, when you give it the time.

Sunday is the wind-down. Don't try to fit one more cellar door in.

Coffee in Dunsborough in the morning. Gabriel Chocolate in Yallingup for one last stop. The single-origin bars are worth the suitcase weight.

With the morning free, drive the back roads through the wine region one more time. Not stopping for tastings, just driving, looking at the vines, getting the shape of the place. The roads between Carbunup and Cowaramup are some of the prettiest in Western Australia and most people don't drive them slowly.

Late lunch somewhere simple before the drive back to Perth. Margaret River Brewhouse for pub food. The Margaret River Hotel for a calmer setting.

Photo: Harry Foley, CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

What I've laid out is a particular kind of week. It's not packed. It's not trying to hit every cellar door. It's built around the assumption that you came here to drink wine seriously, which means drinking less of it, more slowly, in the right rooms.

The mistakes I watch visitors make:

• Booking five cellar doors a day. You can't taste anything by the third one.
• Skipping the day off. By day five your palate is exhausted.
• Skipping the small producers. The famous wineries are famous for a reason but the region's character is in the small operations.
• Skipping the food. Wine here is paired with food in a way that doesn't happen at every wine region. Cellar door restaurants here are not a sideshow.

a self-drive wine tour from Yallingup

After seven days of properly slow tasting, paired with food, broken up with walks and beaches and a day off the wine, you'll know this region in a way that no weekend can give you. You'll have favourite producers. You'll have wines you want to ship home. You'll have a sense of what cool-climate Western Australia tastes like that you couldn't have got from any tasting flight back home.

That's the difference between a wine holiday and a wine education. A week here is the latter, if you let it be.

The gallery on Blythe Rd is the cultural stop mid-week. Thursday afternoon between the beach and dinner is the right time. Jarrah walls, southwest limestone, the same materials the wineries are built into the landscape with. Open most days till 5pm.

Four decades on Blythe Rd. I still drink the local wine. I still go to the farmers market on Saturday morning. The pleasure doesn't wear off, but it does take a week to find, the first time.