Wineries Near Yallingup: A Local's Guide to the Best Five

I'm not a wine writer. I'm a furniture maker who has lived next to some of the best cellar doors in the country for forty years. That's a different kind of qualification.

What I can tell you is what each place actually feels like when you walk in. What the light does in the tasting room. Whether the food matches the wine or just sits next to it. Whether the staff treat you like a punter or like a person. That sort of thing. Wine notes you can get anywhere. Halliday will tell you what's good in the glass. I'll tell you what's good around it.

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

A bit of geography first. The five cellar doors I'm about to take you through are all within about twenty minutes' drive of my workshop. Margaret River wine country isn't one place. It's a long ribbon between the two capes, and the Yallingup end (the northern end, where I am) is the older, quieter end. Vasse Felix planted the first vines down here in 1967. Cullen followed shortly after. By the time I built the gallery in 1988, the wine industry had a foundation under it. Now there are over two hundred producers across the region. You don't need to see them all. You need five. The wider self-drive map across the whole region is the next layer if you've got more than a day; the guided versus self-drive piece helps you decide how to do it.

Google Maps sometimes misdirects via Wildwood Rd when people are looking for Blythe Rd or the wineries near it. Stay on Bussell Hwy, turn at the Carbunup store, then Blythe Rd. From there, every place I'm about to describe is on a sensible loop.

Wills Domain sits up on a rise on Abbey Farm Road, looking back down across the valley. For one lunch with a view, this is the one. The tasting room is small and quiet. There's no hurry about the place. The food has been doing serious things for a long time, and the menu changes with what's growing.

What I like about Wills Domain is the same thing I like about any well-made object: nothing in the room is showing off. The architecture is restrained. The terrace gives you the view without framing it for you. You can sit there with a glass of riesling and feel like you've earned it, whether you have or not.

Go for lunch. Book ahead. They're open most days but the hours shift across the seasons. Check Wills Domain Yallingup before you drive over.

If Wills is the view, Clairault Streicker is the chair. The dining room runs alongside a long lawn that drops into vines, and the trick of the place is that you sit down at midday and look up at three in the afternoon. The wine is unhurried. The food is the same.

I send a lot of visitors here when they tell me they want one big lunch and nothing else for the day. That's the brief Clairault Streicker is built for. Their chardonnay is what most people remember, but I'd ask the staff what they've been pouring for themselves lately and follow that lead. The people behind the counter know.

Clairault Streicker cellar door is the easiest place to check hours and any current bookings policy. It's about ten minutes from the gallery, out Caves Road, in toward the vines.

Photo: David Stanley, CC BY 2.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

With kids, or with people who don't want to be cooped up in a tasting room for two hours, Aravina is the answer. It's a bigger property, more room to move, and they've put thought into making it work for groups. There's a sports car collection on site (surprising, but it works) and the grounds are open enough that nobody feels trapped.

The wine is solid, the food is good, and the staff understand that not everyone in a group is necessarily a wine person. That's a skill, and not every cellar door has it. I send families here often.

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

Vasse Felix is where I send people when food is the point. The restaurant has been winning awards for years, but more importantly, it has been good for years. There's a difference. The kitchen treats the produce the way a good furniture maker treats timber: with respect, without showing off about it.

The cabernet here is the wine I'd put down for a long lunch. Their chardonnay is what the region built its name on. You can do a tasting in the cellar door and then move to the restaurant, or skip the tasting and just book the kitchen. Either works.

This is also the winery that planted the first vines in the region, in 1967. There's a small heritage display you can wander through. Worth ten minutes if you care about that sort of thing, easy to skip if you don't.

Book lunch at Vasse Felix ahead in peak season. They get full, particularly Saturday lunch and Sunday lunch through summer and over Easter.

The route back from Vasse Felix via Blythe Rd takes you past the workshop. If the door's open, come in.

That last bit is the truth, not a sales pitch. The road from Vasse Felix back to Yallingup Siding goes right past my gate on Blythe Rd. People who've been somewhere good with a glass or two of cabernet in them tend to look at timber differently — I'd rather have them in the gallery on that afternoon than on a Monday morning. We're open through to 5pm most days. The flag tells you if we're in.

Voyager is the furthest from Yallingup (about twenty-five minutes south, past Margaret River township) but it earns the drive when the occasion warrants it. The architecture is unmistakable: white walls, a big garden, the South African influence in everything down to the rosebushes. Some people find it too composed. I find it disciplined, which is different.

The long lunch and degustation menus are what Voyager is known for now. They sit you down and stay with you for hours, in the right way. You'd plan a day around it.

If a once-a-trip lunch is the brief and you want the full experience treated seriously, Voyager Estate is where I'd send you. Book well ahead. They don't do walk-ins for the long lunches and you'd be disappointed to drive down for nothing.

You can't do five cellar doors in a day. You shouldn't. The wine deserves better and so do you.

Here's how I'd lay them out:

• One winery, one lunch: Vasse Felix (food) or Voyager (occasion) or Wills Domain (view). Drive home in a taxi.
• Two wineries, a tasting and a lunch: Wills Domain for the late-morning tasting, then Clairault Streicker for lunch. Or Aravina for a morning wander, Vasse Felix for lunch.
• Three wineries, a serious wine day: This is the day where you book a driver. Wills Domain → Clairault Streicker → Aravina, finishing back near the coast. Don't try to add Voyager. It pulls the whole day south.

For a full day together with food in between, where to eat across a Yallingup weekend. Building a longer weekend with art and craft alongside, an art-lover’s weekend in Yallingup. And for a longer formal version of this list with all the practical bits, the Yallingup wine tour route.

People sometimes apologise to me for not knowing what to taste for. They don't have to. There's no test at the cellar door. Tell the person pouring what you've had recently that you liked, and let them work the rest out. That's what they're there for.

The other thing I'd say: don't try to "do" Margaret River wine in a day. The region is bigger than that, and the better cellar doors deserve more than fifteen minutes of your attention. Pick two or three. Sit down. Talk to the staff. Eat properly. The wine you remember years later is almost never the one you rushed through.

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

If you're not staying within walking distance of a cellar door, get a driver. Plenty of small operators in Dunsborough and Yallingup will pick you up, take you through three or four places, and drop you home. You'll pay maybe what you'd pay for two extra bottles of wine, and you'll keep your licence and your dignity. The roads down here are quiet but they're not empty, and the police know exactly when the wineries close.

The other option is to walk to a cellar door from where you're staying. There are accommodation options within walking distance of Wills Domain and Aravina. If that's the kind of day you want, plan it that way from the start.

Autumn. That's the answer to the question of when to come down for wine. The vintage is finishing, the cellar doors are full but not packed, the colour is on the vines, and the light through April and May is the best the region gets. Summer is busy. Winter has its own quiet beauty but the rain can pin you indoors. Autumn is when the region exhales, and the cellar doors are at their most generous.

If you come through Blythe Rd on the way home from any of these places, I'll probably be in the workshop. Come and find the door.