Swings & Roundabouts

Swings & Roundabouts is not a winery in the traditional sense. There's no formal cellar door lunch, no reserve tasting menu, no white tablecloths and no booking system that requires you to commit a week in advance. It's a bottle shop with a wine bar attached. The people who know go in the afternoon.

I've been recommending Swings to visitors for years and the reaction is consistent: people show up expecting another Caves Road cellar door and find something different. A converted shed, a fire pit out the back, a bar made out of repurposed timber, sun on the deck in the afternoon, dogs welcome, kids welcome, no one telling you what to taste in what order. It's the most relaxed wine stop in the region and that's the point.

Photo: Samuel Wiki, CC0 1.0

The wines are made by the team that runs the place. Solid, drinkable, fairly priced. You won't find a flagship cabernet at three hundred dollars a bottle here. You'll find a range of reds, whites, and rosés in the twenty to forty dollar range, most of them good, none of them pretending to be more than they are. That's a refreshing position for a Margaret River cellar door.

The bar serves their wines by the glass alongside a short menu of pizzas, charcuterie, woodfired flatbreads, and the kind of share plates that go with an unhurried afternoon. Beer's on tap. Coffee in the morning. They have a kids' play area near the fire pit so the parents can sit and the children can stop being parented for half an hour.

The crowd is local mid-week, mixed on weekends, festival-flavoured in summer. It's the cellar door equivalent of a good country pub: nothing fancy, everything works.

Swings & Roundabouts is on Caves Road, southern end of the Yallingup cluster, about ten minutes south of my workshop on Blythe Rd. The turn-off is signed. The carpark is dirt and gravel and there's room for a hundred cars on the busy days. You won't need to circle for a space outside of a long weekend.

Swings works best as the second stop of an afternoon. You've done one of the proper cellar doors in the morning, you've had lunch, and you want somewhere unhurried for two hours before you go back to where you're staying.

Suggested before-Swings stops:

Wills Domain for a tasting. Ten minutes north on Abbey Farm Road. The valley view, the small room, the disciplined wines. Half an hour at Wills then south to Swings is a sensible afternoon.

Vasse Felix for lunch. Twenty minutes north. The kitchen does its best work between noon and 2pm. Eat at Vasse, drink at Swings.

Canal Rocks or Smiths Beach for an hour. Canal Rocks is twenty minutes northwest, granite outcrops and the swell breaking through the channel. Smiths is fifteen minutes north. Either gives you the coastal break that the wine country needs in the middle of a tasting day.

The workshop on Blythe Rd. Ten minutes north. Workshop window, gallery, free entry. A different kind of pause from another tasting room.

Photo: undefined · via Wikimedia Commons

Order a flatbread or a charcuterie board, two glasses of wine, and sit on the deck. That's it. Don't try to taste the whole range. Don't ask for a tasting flight as if you're at the formal cellar doors. The staff will pour you a couple to try if you ask, but the operating mode here is order a glass and sit with it.

The pizzas are good. The cured meat is good. The cheese board has the right balance of WA producers and imports. Coffee in the morning is decent.

If you've come with kids, the play area handles them while you have a glass. If you've come with a dog, water bowls at the door. If you've come with a group, the long tables out the back seat eight. If you've come alone, the bar seats a single in a way that doesn't feel awkward.

The wine to drink at Swings: their rosé in summer, their cabernet shiraz in winter. Their Sangiovese is interesting. Their entry-level chardonnay punches above its price.

The cellar door equivalent of a good country pub: nothing fancy, everything works.

If you've left Swings by four, there are still a few options for the early evening.

Yallingup Beach for sunset. Twelve minutes west. The point on the south end catches the late light. The grass above the boat ramp is the right place to sit with the last twenty minutes of the day — or take in the broader sunset options along the cape.

Smiths Beach for a walk. A long walk on the sand, dunes on one side, swell on the other. Ten minutes from Swings.

Dunsborough for dinner. If you didn't eat at Swings, Dunsborough has the most evening options in the area. Pubs, restaurants, the kind of small high street that handles a wine-tired group well.

Back to where you're staying for a quiet evening. If you've been at three cellar doors and you're staying nearby, this is the right call. The wine country does its best work the next morning when you wake up to it again.

Swings & Roundabouts suits a specific kind of visitor. Couples on day three of a wine trip who've done the formal cellar doors and want somewhere relaxed. Families travelling together. Locals catching up for an afternoon. Anyone who's tired of being polite about wine at a tasting bar.

It doesn't suit visitors who've come down for one big lunch and want a serious wine experience. That's Voyager or Vasse Felix or Cullen. Swings is what you do alongside those places, not instead of them.

It also doesn't suit visitors who want to learn about wine. The staff are friendly and helpful, but the format isn't the deep dive that you get at the smaller producer cellar doors. If you want to understand how a Wilyabrup cabernet differs from a Karridale cabernet, go to Cullen.

If you want to sit in the sun with a glass of rosé and not be told anything about it, go to Swings.

Photo: undefined · via Wikimedia Commons

In summer, Swings hosts live music on weekends. It gets busy. The fire pit turns into a fire pit in the better sense of the word in winter. The deck shifts personality with the season. Both work, but a Saturday afternoon in February is a different proposition from a Tuesday afternoon in June.

If you want the quiet version, come on a weekday outside of school holidays. If you want the social version, come on a weekend.

The workshop is about ten minutes north of Swings on Blythe Rd, Yallingup Siding. The turn-off is at the Carbunup store, then onto Blythe Rd. Free entry, viewing window onto the workshop bench, gallery with jarrah and marri pieces and small art exhibitions. We're open most days to 5pm. A morning at the workshop and an afternoon at Swings is a sensible day if you've had enough of formal cellar doors.

For the formal cellar doors that contrast with Swings, and the proper self-drive route.

The honest pitch for Swings & Roundabouts: it's the place you go when you've remembered that wine country is supposed to be relaxed. It's been that for years now, and it still is.