Margaret River stands apart among Australia’s chardonnay regions – remote, relatively young, dominated by a single chardonnay clone, and paired with cabernet sauvignon rather than pinot noir. This sense of exceptionalism has translated into international recognition: for many wine buyers outside of Australia, Margaret River chardonnay represents Australian white wine at its finest, rivalling Barossa shiraz in status and importance.
The four decade long love affair international buyers and wine critics have had with Margaret River chardonnay is a significant accolade, given that the region represents only 4% of the national vineyard area, 2.2% of the country’s chardonnay harvest by weight, and 0.4% of Australian wine exports by volume.
In fact, and in stark contrast to the national norm, the region grows more sauvignon blanc than it does chardonnay. The statistics paint a remarkable picture – given that it is one of Australian wine’s calling cards in the global arena, there really isn’t all that much Margaret River chardonnay to go around.
The region itself is a relatively long and narrow strip of land located three hours’ drive south-west of Perth, stretching roughly 95 kilometres between Cape Leeuwin in the south and Cape Naturaliste in the north. It is surrounded by deep oceanic waters on three sides – the Indian Ocean to the west and north and the Southern Ocean to the south, with the two oceans meeting off Cape Leeuwin – with the continental bulk of the south-west corner of Western Australia on its fourth side. Aside from making the region a surfing hotspot, the moderating influence of the ocean here also creates a relatively consistent climate – lots of rain in winter and spring, followed by relatively warm and dry summers and autumns.
Geologically, the region itself is split in two along a roughly north-south axis by the Dunsborough Fault, with significant changes in soil types and topography on either side of this line. All of this adds up to a pretty special place for plant growth and biodiversity, with 80% of the region’s native plant species found nowhere else on earth. And while Vitis vinifera isn’t a native species here, these conditions are pretty much tailor-made for grape growing – which makes the region’s near-total absence of viticultural history prior to the 1960s something of a head-scratcher.
The American connection
The first vines planted in the Margaret River region were placed in the soil by the Bussell family in the 1830s – not long after English colonists commenced violently dispossessing the region’s traditional owners, the Wadandi and Bibulman peoples of the Noongar nation – but these vineyard plantings were small, and reserved exclusively for the use of the family. Other early vineyards, such as those established by Elijah Dawson in the 1850s and the Meleri family (the same neighbours we got our original Fragola cuttings from!) in the 1920s, were consistent with this theme and mostly kept for family and friends, although evidence suggests that Dawson may have traded wine with passing American whaling ships.
Margaret River’s viticultural story proper commenced elsewhere: in 1952, at the University of California’s Davis campus. Here, the chairman of the recently established Western Australian Vine Fruits Research Trust, Walter Ashton, met with Dr. Harold Olmo, a professor of viticulture at Davis, and invited him to visit Western Australia to investigate viticultural challenges the Swan Valley region, just outside of Perth, was experiencing. Olmo took a sabbatical from his role and arrived for a nine-month visit in 1955, where he struck up a friendship with the legendary Houghton’s winemaker Jack Mann. While Mann worked out of the Swan Valley, he had an inkling – gained from his time as a touring cricketer – that Western Australia’s vinous future lay in regions further south, not in the hot and flood-prone Swan.
Olmo travelled to the Frankland River area and concurred, eventually producing a report for the Trust that revealed structural issues in Swan Valley viticulture and suggested that Western Australia’s southwest was “equivalent or better than” the “quality districts of Australia or California” – a report that the state government of the time promptly ignored.
“Margaret River will, with time, become one of the world’s great wine regions.”
While Olmo’s report didn’t have immediate impact, it captured the attention of Dr. John Gladstones of the University of Western Australia, who dedicated more attention to the conditions for viticulture in the Margaret River region. (The official eastern border of the Margaret River wine region, ‘The Gladstones Line’, is named in his honour.) By 1966, he had gathered enough data to confidently predict that “Margaret River will, with time, become one of the world’s great wine regions”. It didn’t take long for others to listen.
In 1967 Perth cardiologist Dr. Tom Cullity, with the support of Mann, purchased the land for and planted the original Vasse Felix vineyard in Wilyabrup, the first vineyard of the region’s professional viticultural era.
Inspired by the gravelly soils and maritime climate shared by Bordeaux and Margaret River, he planted cabernet sauvignon for reds, and riesling for white. Others soon followed, with a roll-call of the region’s icons establishing themselves shortly after Vasse Felix: Moss Wood in 1969, Cape Mentelle and Sandalford in 1970, Cullen Wines in 1971, and Woodlands and Leeuwin Estate in 1973.
The last of these, Leeuwin Estate, had another American connection in the form of famous California vigneron Robert Mondavi, a pioneer of the Napa Valley and its rich chardonnay. Mondavi collaborated with Denis and Tricia Horgan on the establishment of Leeuwin Estate, and at his insistence the Horgans sought chardonnay cuttings from the Western Australian state government agriculture department.
The fruit from those cuttings, planted in 1976, were first turned into a varietal chardonnay wine in the 1980 vintage – and that same vintage of what is now known as the ‘Art Series’ chardonnay catapulted both Leeuwin Estate and the region in general into the international spotlight when the U.K.-based wine publication Decanter recommended it highly in a blind tasting of chardonnays from the entire world.
‘Art Series’ remains an icon of Australian chardonnay in general, and blazed a trail in the international market for other producers to follow.
California clone dreaming
Olmo’s contribution to Western Australian viticulture didn’t cease with his 1955 report – two years later, he sent a package of twelve vines, simply labelled ‘pinot chardonnay’, to Bill Jamieson at the Western Australian government agricultural department. Those cuttings were propagated at the Swan Research Station and then planted at Valencia Wines in Gingin, to the north of Perth – thus chardonnay vines from these cuttings are known as ‘Gingin clone’.
Unbeknownst to Olmo and Jamieson, the vines suffered from a fruiting issue known as millerandage or ‘hen and chick’, possibly caused by a viral infection, which leads to the development of bunches with a mix of normal-sized berries (the ‘hens’) and very small, seedless berries (the ‘chicks’). This issue obviously reduces the quantity of juice the berries yield – but the ratio of skin to flesh on the small berries leads to deeply concentrated fruit character in the finished wines.
Cullen Wines’ winemaker, Vanya Cullen, explains that chardonnay was always intended to be included in the plantings at Cullen’s estate vineyard.
“Dad [Dr. Kevin Cullen] wrote a letter in 1967 requesting chardonnay cuttings from the agriculture department,” Cullen says. “We couldn’t get chardonnay cuttings when we planted in 1971 – we could only get cabernet sauvignon and riesling.”
For Cullen, this availability issue, in her words, “reflects that Australia was a red-wine drinking culture at the time. When we planted, we planted two-thirds red and one-third white, because everyone was drinking reds.”
The Cullens, alongside Leeuwin Estate, were finally allowed to purchase and plant in chardonnay cuttings sourced from Valencia’s Gingin block in 1976, and they made their first varietal chardonnay wine in 1980 – making them co-pioneers of the region’s chardonnay style.
For Virginia Willcock, the current winemaker at Vasse Felix, the accidental dominance of the Gingin clone in Margaret River’s chardonnay plantings is a blessing.
“We ended up with the chardonnay clone here in Margaret River that just serendipitously goes beautifully in this climate,” she says. “If you talk to anyone from Burgundy, they would say there’s just no chance that we would make a decent chardonnay. Yet we’ve got this clone that’s hen-and-chick – super-concentrated, super low–yielding, and quite retarded in acid degradation. So we hold good acid, even though we don’t have a massive diurnal range in temperature.”
The suitability of clone to climate means that, for her, the powerful fruit produced here allows winemakers to produce a wide range of different styles.
“It’s really powerful, and it’s full of beautiful phenolic skin thickness and flavour – you can actually play with it,” she says. “You can let it have a lot of character – high solids, wild ferments, it just takes everything on … if it’s powerful fruit, let it be dirty and let it be wild, and you’ll end up with layers and layers within.”
“Australia was a red-wine drinking culture at the time. When we planted, we planted two-thirds red and one-third white, because everyone was drinking reds.”
Regarding the seeming mismatch between the region’s two hero grape varieties – the Burgundian chardonnay for whites and the Bordelaise cabernet for reds – Willcock takes a somewhat sacrilegious approach.
“Who says Bordeaux is right? And who says Burgundy is right?” she says.
She chalks up the ability of both varieties to flourish in Margaret River to the region’s cooling oceanic breezes, which moderate the otherwise Mediterranean climate and give a cool-climate gloss to the fruit without impeding physiological ripeness.
“We can do both,” she says. “They both look like cool-climate expressions of their varieties here, but consistently and persistently ripe.”
She adds: “We’re braggers here in Margaret River because what we end up putting in the bottle is inevitably absolutely beautiful. But what goes unsaid on a regular basis is the cost of production and yields – sometimes shitty yields.”
Burgundy versus Bordeaux
It’s not just in the mismatch of varieties that Burgundy meets Bordeaux in Margaret River. The historical dominance of Bordelaise red varieties, combined with the prestige with which the region’s chardonnay wines are held in the international market, leads to what might be broadly categorised as a ‘Bordelaise’ mindset for the region’s chardonnays, with producers often making a relatively expensive and powerfully-flavoured ‘grand vin’ from their best sites, followed by a ‘second wine’ and potentially an entry-level ‘third wine’. It’s an approach that seems to stand in stark contrast to the Yarra Valley’s love affair with single-vineyard expressions of chardonnay.
Willcock, who makes three chardonnays along these Bordelaise lines as well as a single-site chardonnay from a block of Gingin clone vines whose fruit is “powerful, but doesn’t like oak at all,” argues that the Margaret River is just as conscious of site specificity as the Yarra – it just doesn’t emphasise this aspect as much in labelling and marketing.
“You have to remember also that there’s 160 producers in Margaret River, and probably a hundred to 150 of them are actually single-site producers,” she says. “They’ve only got one block of chardonnay. So there’s a lot of singularity in some producers.”
She lauds Nocturne’s Julian Langworthy and McHenry Hohnen as leaders in site-specific chardonnay in the region, but also defends the virtues of blending wines from multiple sites to create a single, complex wine.
“Our ‘Heytesbury’ chardonnay is from two sites – very unique grand cru sites – that we bring together to make a highly complex, amazing wine,” she says.
“I could make those two sites into five different batches. And when you’re a winemaker, you look at the micro-nuances and go, ‘Shit, I could probably make about thirty-eight chardonnays if I wanted to show the differences of little plots.’ But it’s much better if we can make something by putting the grand cru plots together that more than a hundred people can have a bottle of.”
For her part, Cullen says that she has, in her words, “always looked at our vineyard as a Burgundian model, not a Bordelaise model.”
As such, she takes a parcellaire approach in the winery when making the Cullen Wines’ flagship ‘Kevin John’ chardonnay: “We hand-harvest small batches and bring it into the winery on the flower and fruit days – the biodynamic harvesting days,” she says. “Then it’s a decision at that point about whether it goes into amphora for a couple of days on skins, or whether it gets pressed to a concrete egg, or whether it gets pressed straight to biodynamic flower-day puncheons.”
“I could make those two sites into five different batches. But it’s much better if we can make something by putting the grand cru plots together that more than a hundred people can have a bottle of.”
While Cullen is happy to support a more Bordelaise approach to winemaking – she thinks the diversity of thought in the region is a “good thing” – she does believe that it was a “tragedy” when a 2018 proposal to officially enshrine subregions identified by Dr. John Gladstones within the Margaret River GI was defeated.
“I think that’s the way you build – if you can acknowledge what all winemakers already know about where the subregions are,” she says. “If you have the land and the subregions, then you can zero down to the wines that are the super-icons, that are really relevant and worthy … you can’t say South Australia or Victoria or Burgundy or wherever has a place for those wines, but Margaret River doesn’t.”
It’s a sentiment that Willcock shares.
“I calls us the modern-day Margaret River monks,” she says. “It’s our job to discover the grand cru terroir. It’s our job to discover the premier crus. We need to give everything the most love we can – give every block the greatest opportunity so we can discover all of those incredible sites.”
She notes that only 1% of Vasse Felix’s chardonnay vineyard area goes into the ‘Heytesbury’, 20% goes into their regular chardonnay, and the rest goes into the entry-level ‘Filius’ – a mathematical breakdown not dissimilar to Burgundy’s breakdown of approximately 2% grand cru sites, 10% premier cru sites, and 40% village-level sites. (The rest of Burgundy’s vineyard area, just shy of half, goes into generic Bourgogne wines, for which Vasse Felix has no analogue.)
“I didn’t design it that way,” she says. “We certainly didn’t construct it. It was just one of those really weird mathematical things I did at the end of one day and went ‘Oh, that’s weird, I wonder if the monks found it the same way …’”
Viticultural blessings in an uncertain future
It’s almost a cliché to say that viticulturists from other regions look with envy at Margaret River’s relatively stable climate and idyllic growing conditions, with lots of winter rainfall to supply vines with their water needs and dry, warm summers keeping disease pressure low as fruit develops.
Willcock says that the Margaret River is “a very unique environment, and that’s how we end up doing it so well.” Despite this, she points to several viticultural challenges: flowering issues in spring can dramatically reduce yields – not helped by the millerandage already present in Gingin clone chardonnay – and hungry birds are a persistent threat, requiring extensive netting to protect the fruit.
“You’ve got this up-and-down cost effect, but reliable high quality. I know we sound like we’re bragging all the time, but we go through our ups and downs, that’s for sure.”
The logistics of getting vineyard labour in to, and wine out from, one of the world’s most remote viticultural areas poses it’s own challenges, too.
“Everyone’s go to have something to whinge about!” Willcock says, with a laugh. “But the pressure of things isn’t always easy.”
“You’ve got this up-and-down cost effect, but reliable high quality. I know we sound like we’re bragging all the time, but we go through our ups and downs, that’s for sure.”
For Cullen, “People in Margaret River have disease issues, too – if they don’t manage their vineyards very well.”
She has little time for the argument that others in the wine industry sometimes make that the region’s idyllic climate makes it easier for Cullen to operate according to biodynamic principles, as opposed to more marginal regions.
“I’d counter that by saying Burgundy has the greatest number of biodynamic producers of just about anywhere in the world,” she says. “And their climate is much worse than Tasmania, or the Yarra Valley. They have far more challenges.”
She argues that the way biodynamic practices build soil health can help make the region more resilient in the face of climate change, which, for her, “is a global problem – and it’s going to affect everyone. It’s just something which people have got their heads buried in the sand about.”
“People in Margaret River have disease issues, too – if they don’t manage their vineyards very well.”
Despite these challenges, both Cullen and Willcock are bullish about the future of Margaret River chardonnay, and the stylistic diversity the region is capable of – from lean, mineral-driven styles to opulent, rich statement wines such as ‘Art Series’, and every point in between.
“I don’t think there’s any limit to how much the world is just going to want to keep drinking Margaret River chardonnay, because it’s so reliable,” Willcock says. “I think it hasn’t even reached its maximum potential in the world yet.”
Cullen concurs about quality: “If you look at Margaret River chardonnay, it’s incredible,” she says.
Her ideal for the future is for the region’s stylistic diversity to be an extension of its viticultural diversity – in her words, “going back to the vineyard, looking at the fruit, and making a decision from there. That means people understanding their vineyard and the subregions and what makes the best wine from that site – which gives you diversity and individuality.”
She points to the existing diversity of styles from the region’s makers, both well-known and lesser-known, and says, “Whatever you’re after, you name it – you’ve got wine styles there that can to fit in with the particular style of chardonnay that anybody really likes.”
This article is courtesy of Young Gun of Wine; first published 12 September 2025.