Famous for its world-class wine, cheese, chocolate and surfing beaches – almost everything that makes life worth living – the Margaret River region, around three hours south of Perth, WA, is a place to visit and revisit whenever the opportunity arises.
This time, it arose from my inbox in the form of an irresistibly priced Groupon for three nights at a hotel called Stay Margaret River. ($429 for three nights in one of their big Deluxe Rooms, and that included a $75 F&B voucher and a bottle of local wine.)
Predictably, Roy baulked at it being a 20-minute walk from the hotel to the centre of town. (Did we do the walk?, I hear you ask. Yes we did. Once.)
Day 1 – Wine for Dudes
This is our third or fourth Margaret River wine tour. Unsurprisingly, they tend to blur into one another. But with so many estates that you can visit – 187 of them, says Prof. Google – you’re unlikely to return to the same ones, especially if you choose a different tour operator each time.
I liked the tone of the Wine for Dudes website (winefordudes.com), and booked the full-day (10.30am to 5.30pm) tour. It’s a reasonable $115 per head, including generous tastings and lunch.
So, with Fleetwood Mac belting out from the speakers, and the amiable Aidan at the wheel – he’s from Byron Bay, but studied wine in WA and is a qualified viticulturist and winemaker – we set off with another 13 passengers: Aussies, Brits and a couple of Danes.
Margaret River wine’s international success over its brief 50 years of existence is phenomenal, says Aidan, especially for such a relatively tiny area. Many of its wines are Bordeaux-like, he explains. Situated, like Bordeaux, on the west coast of the continent, Margaret River continuously benefits from the sort of weather that Bordeaux enjoys only in its very best years.
Along with Bordeaux-style reds, he says, Burgundian-style chardonnays top the charts. As I’ve probably mentioned before, the proof is in the stats: this region produces just three to five percent of Australia’s wines, but fully 25 percent of the country’s top-notch drops.
#1 Brookwood
Brookwood is boutique wine estate, meaning it produces under 10,000 cases a year. Aidan explains that Australia has the world’s highest tax on wine production – almost 42 percent! Only by opening to the public, offering tasting and direct sales from the cellar door, are these sorts of wineries able to make a living: 30 percent of that tax comes back to them on direct sales.
#2 Margaret River Dairy Co.
Here we bought a little wheel of mature cheddar encased in black rind, which I remember paying twice the price for in Singapore, and some nutty-looking Pecorino.
You have to love this cow! (The bovine sculpture isn’t bad, either.)
#3 Hay Shed Hill
Two hours at this fabulous winery flashed by. From Hay Shed Hill’s long and worthy wine list, we ended up buying a mixed case of 12 of the rosé, the Bordeaux-style five-varietal Morrison’s Gift, and a couple of others, all for convenient (and free) delivery to us in Joondalup.
Then to the winery’s own Rustico restaurant for a delicious tapas lunch of rocket salad with pecorino and candied walnuts, patatas bravas, and several varieties of thin-crust pizza.
Dotted down the middle of the long table were jars labelled simply Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz, which you mixed to your own taste. Cute!
#4 Lenton Brae
Small and privately owned, the award-winning Lenton Brae Winery is at the higher end of the market. Its best wines are hand-picked, so you will pay more for them; it’s choosy about its barrels; it has sorting tables, we’re told.
What’s more, it’s considered an architectural icon, with a gorgeous belfry that sounds the quarter hour and rings on the hour.
#5 Il Providore
All sorts of stuff can be found at this foodie provision store. Roy was thrilled with his new champagne stopper – but please don’t tell anyone that we have a need for such a thing.
(I remember dinner parties in Durban where he’d open a bottle of port and throw away the cork… Oh, how old we’ve grown.)
#6 Bettenay’s Wine & Nougat
Greg Bettenay delivered such a flirtatiously entertaining tasting that we had to buy a bottle of Bettenay’s creamy Coffee Nougaretto liqueur.
#7 Cheeky Monkey Brewery & Cidery
Famous for Cheeky Monkey’s paddles of beer and cider, its laid-back lawns and languid lake, Burton Creek is a great spot for a group photo. You have to wonder how many wine-lovers have ended up in the lake over the years.
Day 2 – Beach Day
Firmly declaring today a Beach Day, I prevailed upon Roy – who is not fond of sand and has never been a beach bunny – to drive us to picturesque Prevelly, just 7km from Stay Margaret River.
At its fabulous Surfers Point the car park was jam-packed with surfers there for its famous Main Break: we counted at least 30 of them out there.
Information boards describe the various surf breaks and explain how Margaret River was essentially founded by surfers, who have played an instrumental role in the development of the region.
From Surfers Point, you can beach walk past Fraggle and Rock Pools, saying hello to this lovely lady and fish sculpture before arriving at the mouth of the Margaret River.
(Or you can go by car and join your walkative wife there. Remember to ensure that she washes her feet properly and doesn’t track any sand into the Z4 that you’ve just had valeted.)
Right next to Prevelly is Ganarabup, a beautifully sheltered cove with an awesome lookout point. At the White Elephant Café, you have to hold on tight to your ham and cheese toastie lest a seagull wrest if from your greasy grasp.
That was just the start of today’s gastronomic grief – it would continue at Yallingup with a pie and a sausage roll that had been keeping warm for a couple of weeks. Yuck.
Cautionary Diners’ Tale
One of our best holidays ever, way back in the 20th century, was a week in Provence. When Roy suggested a return trip I refused – on the grounds that we’d never be able to recreate that lovely experience, and would be disappointed.
When it came to choosing restaurants in Margaret River, we (meaning Roy, of course) made a basic error of judgment: returning to the two restaurants we’d enjoyed on our last trip to Margaret River, two years ago. Don’t do it, I said, but the man is a bulldog.
On our first night, therefore, we returned to Morrie’s (Anytime), where in January 2017 we feasted fabulously on 72-hour-braised beef. There’s a new chef, however, and that dish was no longer on the menu.
Again we started off at the bar. Again, I had the tequila-chilli Goblin Co cocktail. Again, Roy had an Old Fashioned. Again, both were excellent.
We ordered two small plates to start: the pork belly and the chicken liver pâté (topped with a failed gel: darkly acrid and a bit sloppy); and shared a main of tasty lamb served with some quite interesting barley, plus an order of broccolini. Not a bad meal, but unmemorable. Also, it seemed a bit much to have to pay $19 for a small plate of broccolini just to get something green to go with the lamb.
Our second night found us back at Miki’s Open Kitchen. As I feared, it was a bit of a disappointment. To start with, Roy had decided to drive into town this time, rather than have a mellowing drink or three, so he was more than usually critical. It didn’t help that Miki’s formerly all-Japanese team has been replaced by gaijin.
We chose the Miki’s Trust option*($60 pp): amuse bouche, cold entrée and warm entrée, all fairly good, I thought. For mains, my sous-vide pork was a good choice; Roy described his cod, which came unexpectedly and unwelcomely breaded, as “very average”.
* Miki now also offers a “Full Experience” ($85) that includes additional items.
On the third (and last) night, we used our $75 voucher for dinner at the hotel’s Willow Grill. On Wednesday nights it offers 50 percent off the price of main courses, and, tragically, an unexpected rush of diners had gobbled up all the barramundi and the pork belly by 8pm, leaving nothing of interest to us.
To the rescue came hotel owner and director Justin Hickman*, who magicked up a portion of barramundi for Roy, and a fillet steak for me. In the melee, the baked camembert starter was forgotten. Never mind, we made up for it afterwards with an impeccable Dom Pedro* and sticky date pudding.
(* Though the man inexplicably denied being South African, the presence on the menu of a Dom Pedro – the thick whisky milkshake so beloved of South Africans – was a dead giveaway. Thereafter, both Linked In and Facebook confirmed that he’s from Hillcrest, close to my home town of Durban. You can run, Justin, but you can’t hide.)
