On the Bussel Highway, an immaculate ribbon of tarmac that takes you south of Perth, the vegetation changes dramatically in a matter of miles. Suddenly, around the town of Busselton, which is 130 miles from Perth, instead of the rough, hardscrabble soils that form the bedrock of Australia’s desert environment, you find yourself in a more Mediterranean ecosystem.
A further 40 miles south and you’re in Margaret River, an eco-warrior’s dream location with carbon-neutral residents – artists, chefs, surfers, organic farmers, winemakers – all over the place, neat, well-tended countryside, and the crispest, cleanest air you can breathe on this planet. Sea breezes from the Indian Ocean and the Southern Ocean wash over this forested landscape like an air-conditioning system. It really is some kind of country paradise.
To add to the joys of this idyll, Margaret River has just been named the best wine region in the world. It’s a remarkable accolade for such a remote Australian outpost, one that produces just 2 per cent of the country’s wines, albeit 20 per cent of its premium wines. That honour was bequeathed at the 2025 International Wine and Spirits Competition, which rated these winelands above Bordeaux, Burgundy, Tuscany and Rioja.
Some may quibble. However, those of us who know Margaret River are not that surprised. The wine author and broadcaster Oz Clarke has long been an enthusiastic advocate, noting the region’s ‘capacity to produce voluptuous chardonnays and smooth, balanced cabernet-merlot blends with ripe fruit and silky tannins’. I have been travelling there for more than 20 years and share Oz Clarke’s enthusiasm, collecting wines from Cullen, Leeuwin, Vasse Felix and Moss Wood with as much enthusiasm as I hoard Burgundies and Bordeaux.
So, following England’s pitiful, weak-kneed Ashes humiliation, I decided to hire a car and head out of this cricket graveyard for a bit of viticultural resuscitation. My first stop was an old friend, Vanya Cullen, the matriarch of the Margaret River wine industry. She represents everything that is environmentally progressive about this region.
Cullen Wines, like many of the other boutique wineries in the region, was started in the late 1960s. Founded by a doctor, Vanya’s father Kevin, it has since developed a reputation as the premier biodynamic wine producer in the region – even the country. Vanya has been Australian Winemaker of the Year and in 2023 was awarded the Order of Australia in King Charles’s first Birthday Honours List. Our King and Vanya Cullen are joined at the hip when it comes to environmental philosophy.
The result of what many people would regard as oenological woo-woo is a selection of the most subtle, nuanced, perfumed Australian wines I have ever tasted
As we sipped, swirled and sniffed at a selection of Cullen current releases, Vanya patiently explained to this enviro-illiterate how they bury cow manure compacted into cow horns in the soil and harvest the grapes in line with the lunar calendar. And what I can tell you is that the result of what many people would regard as oenological woo-woo is a selection of the most subtle, nuanced, perfumed Australian wines I have ever tasted. The Diana Madeline, named after her mother, is a cabernet-merlot blend that surpasses most New World wines, while the Kevin John, a ‘flower-day’ chardonnay which, according to Jancis Robinson, once put Domaine Leflaive’s Grand Cru Bâtard-Montrachet in the shade.
After Cullen I visited two more signature Margaret River wineries, Leeuwin Estate and Vasse Felix, the latter owned by the Holmes a’Court family. Both are exemplars of the region’s organic, environmentally appropriate winemaking philosophy. Leeuwin has also been celebrated as a cultural estate, hosting concerts by Sting, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Ray Charles and Kiri Te Kanawa, although all of this was curtailed by Covid and has not quite recovered. Vasse Felix’s viticulturist Virginia Willcock is Australia’s current Winemaker of the Year, and the Estate’s premium wines – the current-release Tom Cullity cabernet-merlot blend and the Heytesbury chardonnay – are now welcome additions to my wine cellar.
Friends who have been living in Margaret River for decades have begged me not to write this piece. Not surprisingly, they want their isolation and underpopulation to remain off-radar. I have betrayed them, but my duty to keep Spectator readers up to date remains supreme. Consider yourselves informed.
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