No faux chateaux or Californianesque excess here: these seven Australian wineries are grand, not grandiose.
All will almost certainly offer you a lovely location, and a warm welcome from knowledgeable, unpretentious folks.
Each has a range of genuinely-excellent wines that begin at prices well south of $30.
Three will also serve you a delicious, affordable lunch.
Five of these I have visited multiple times; cross-checking confirmed that my happy experience at the other two was no fluke…and I have tasted more than a few wines from all seven over more than a few years.
This is a 100% non-commercial, unsponsored, payola-free blog.
The hyperlinks will take you to the wineries’ sites. The list is in alphabetical order.
Best’s Great Western (Western Victoria)
Don’t let the 1860’s-vintage “stables” (which now house the tasting room), the catacomb-like underground cellar, and the generally “rustic” ambience fool you!
Wine hygiene at this venerable, family-owned producer is immaculate.
Here, you can spend a very large amount of money on a single bottle of very rare red wine.
However, you can also enjoy the happy fact that Best’s more modestly-priced reds and whites consistently offer great value; expertly crafted from their own superb fruit, they are beautiful, balanced, flavoursome.
This is most especially true of their Shiraz and Riesling, but Pinot Noir and Cabernet can often prove a delightful surprise.
The 2017 Foudre Ferment Riesling is glorious – wonderful fruit and masterful, gentle use of old oak yield a harmonious, nicely-textured result which is definitely not “oaky”.
A (free, self-guided, well-annotated) ramble through the underground cellar is a pleasure unique to this winery.
Best’s is conviently close to the Grampians/Gariwerd; one of my favourite Australian mountain ranges/places, the Grampians are less than a full day’s drive from Adelaide, and only a morning or afternoon away from Melbourne.
Castle Rock Estate (Porongurup, Great Southern, WA)
If I were only allowed to purchase wine from one producer…
The Rieslings are consistently exquisite, underpriced and ageworthy, the standard version is very probably Australia’s best value white wine.
The Pinot Noir is WA’s most consistent, also ageworthy.
The Diletti Chardonnay is elegant, underpriced, ageworthy.
Other wines are good, too; none are show-offy; in almost every case, they prove even better than the first sip suggests…Castle Rock’s are cool climate wines that you enjoy even more as you near the bottom of the bottle. (as opposed to the “oh wow!” kind that instantly seduce, then prove cloying)
The building is small, very modest, with a buzzer on the wooden door.
Almost certainly, a member of the Diletti family will be at the counter..or will be, after he or she answers the buzzer.
Porongurup is a very special place (even if you are a teetotaller)
Castle Rock Estate has no restaurant, but few wineries offer such a splendid view…you could picnic.
Duke’s Vineyard (Porongurup, Great Southern, WA)
Duke’s is at the other (western) end of the northern side of Porongorup’s compact, very ancient little mountains.
It is just a few minutes drive from Castle Rock Estate, whose Rob Diletti also makes nearly all of Duke’s wines.
Duke’s is a specialist: its wines are from estate-grown Riesling, Cabernet or Shiraz.
You will likely be surprised by how different they are from Castle Rock’s: typically, more “exuberant”, but similarly superb.
Their premium wines – the Magpie Hill range – usually comprehensively-outclass many far higher-priced competitors.
The cheaper, “Single Vineyard” range is also consistently excellent; Duke’s has now really nailed its Rose – fresh, dry, from Cabernet.
The well-windowed tasting room is a very congenial place; as is true at Castle Rock, you will likely detect some entirely-justified pride, but zero hauteur, affectation or nonsense.
As is pleasingly true of all wineries in this post, in my experience, care is always taken to ensure that wines “on tasting” are presented in good condition, in appropriate glasses.
Hay Shed Hill (Willyabrup Valley, Margaret River, WA)
Beautifully sited, Hay Shed Hill has some of Margaret River’s oldest vines.
When I first moved to WA, their wines were maddeningly inconsistent.
Not now! (once Michael Kerrigan took over, things rapidly improved)
In my experience, there are several Margaret River wineries who “deliver”, unerringly, across their entire range; these are the producers whose premium wines really do justify their prices, and whose cheaper wines are consistently excellent and offer great value.
The several that readily spring to my mind: Woodlands, Juniper Estate, McHenry Hohnen, Ashbrook, Xanadu and Hay Shed Hill.
Hay Shed Hill takes the biscuit here, because, in addition to a reliably-rewarding cellar door experience, it hosts the southern outpost of Rustico. (whose home base proved that a very good Spanish/ish restaurant could prosper in Rockingham)
Rustico at Hayshed Hill – especially, on its deck, in benign weather – is an idyllic lunch venue.
Their food is fresh and tasty, the tapas-style menu makes it equally well-suited to gluttons and to modest eaters, and the wines (all from Hay Shed Hill or Kerrigan + Berry) are excellent, nicely varied and reasonably priced.
Hay Shed Hill does Margaret River’s staples very well, but you should also try their Tempranillo, Malbec and Vermentino.
Even/especially, if you too are generally underwhelmed by “SSB”s & “SBS”s, you should certainly try the Block 1.
(I often wish that more Margaret River Semillon was allowed to stand alone, rather than being “polluted”/”dumbed down” by Sauvignon Blanc. Let’s just say that wines which remind me of “alcoholic Passiona”, “Kiwi Fruit cocktails” or “cat’s piss” are not the kinds I enjoy)
Hay Shed Hill Block 1 Semillon Sauvignon Blanc is the loveliest SSB I have ever encountered; discreetly wooded, elegant, ageworthy, and not at all “feline”, it is a bargain for a wine of such excellence and individuality – sublime with Spanish/ish seafood.
Architecturally, this is the most elegant/polished winery – the least “modest” – of this modestly-magnificent seven.
Holm Oak (Tamar Valley, northern Tasmania)
Most especially if you enjoy ageworthy, cool climate Chardonnay and Pinot Noir (but not only – I would not give the proverbial two bob for most Australian Pinot Gris/Grigio, but Holm Oak’s 2017 Pinot Gris is a tasty, poised exception) this winery should be on your “radar”, even if you never visit it.
That said, after a couple of years of enjoying the consistency of the aforementioned, a visit to Holm Oak provided an object lesson in the art of delivering a good cellar door experience.
There is no grand structure, no vast hall, no “straining to impress”, but it is pleasingly obvious that this family-run outfit has put thought and effort into hiring and training its staff, and into presenting its wines effectively, informatively, unpretentiously.
The two staffers at the counter were not family members, but both were very well-informed, and consistently courteous, natural and flexible in their behaviour to each other, and to whomever arrived at the cellar door – a very-various set of visitors, as it happened.
There is no restaurant, but if the weather is kind, you could enjoy a picnic in a grove of oaks, surrounded by vines.
If you had failed to plan your picnic, good news: this cellar door has a mini-deli of locally-sourced goodies (from which – with a bottle of excellent Pinot Noir that did not cost even half of eighty dollars – my beloved and I made a very enjoyable lunch)
Here, different Pinots and Chardonnays at different price points are in fact pleasingly different from each other – not merely “better, as you pay more”; the “lighter”, cheaper ones are themselves lovely, well-made, unforced, from excellent fruit.
Jane Brook Estate Winery (Swan Valley, WA)
Conveniently within “lunch, today” distance for car-owning residents of metropolitan Perth, Jane Brook will likely surprise any first-time visitor.
One minute away, you are in bleak outer suburbia, wondering why anyone had urged you to go there.
There is nothing special about the car park area.
The modest building’s exterior is not a thing of great beauty.
However, walk in, and you will be rewarded!
Inside, it is quiet, snug and cosy on a wintry day, or a cool refuge on a stinking hot Swan Valley summer day.
The deck outside – overlooking gnarled vines and trees, with the Darling Scarp on the horizon – is a lovely spot on a gently sunny day in spring, winter or autumn.
In good years those gnarled vines yield beautiful, rich but not overcooked warm-climate Shiraz; the (current release) 2014 Back Block Shiraz is excellent.
Jane Brook also has a Margaret River vineyard, so you could choose a likely-good wine (Cabernet or Chardonnay, especially) from there.
Their fortified (Swan Valley) wines are reliably luscious, and – this being a cellar door – you can always “try before you buy”.
Food is modestly priced, simple, and delicious – various cold platters & basket options, with cheeses, charcuterie and fresh produce from mostly-local sources, and – sometimes – nice hot pies and soups too.
The reality is true to the claim headlined on their website: “Real wine, real food, real people.”
Lake Breeze Wines (Langhorne Creek, Fleurieu Peninsula, SA)
Langhorne Creek – near Lake Alexandrina – is almost billiard table flat, unassuming, oft-overlooked, but in fact a key region for rich red wines…and an increasingly-rewarding destination.
If you enjoy such wines, you almost certainly have consumed fermented fruit from Langhorne Creek; this region yields more wine than does the Barossa Valley!
Readily day-trippable from Adelaide, Langhorne Creek has several fine cellar doors – Bleasdale and Lake Breeze, most especially.
You should visit both, but Lake Breeze is the place for lunch.
There is a very nice modesty about the Follett family’s winery, cellar door and restaurant; nothing is try-too-hard/blowhard, but everything is done well, without fuss, and everyone there is friendly, unaffected.
I took this post’s featured photo whilst enjoying lunch at Lake Breeze on a sultry summer day, looking over the vines, with Mount Barker softly visible on the horizon.
Whites are eminently ok, but reds are the main attraction; generous, but balanced, harmonious, even elegant, they are utterly reliable, good value, a pleasure to drink even when young, but much more so when aged.
Cabernet, Shiraz and blends are all good – the Cabernet, especially – and their Old Vine Grenache is lovely, fragrant. The Arthur’s Reserve is perhaps Australia’s best value truly-premium red wine, and very few Shiraz/Cabernet blends match the consistent quality and value of Lake Breeze’s modestly-priced Bernoota.
The restaurant and tasting room are as reliably-enjoyable and reasonably-priced as are the wines.
Hi Doug, I have visited two of the wineries on the eastern side of the Nullabor – Bests and Lake Breeze – and can vouch for your assessment of both of them. I will save the WA wineries until I finally get to the west, which may be later this year, otherwise there is always 2019.
And the next time I’m in the Tamar, I’ll make a point of visiting Holm Oak.
Thanks for the tips on some good tipples.