Vasse Felix

Vasse Felix is the founding wine estate of Margaret River — the first vineyard and winery planted in what is now one of the world’s most admired regions for Cabernet Sauvignon. Its story is the story of the region’s beginning.

The cardiologist who started a region

The estate was established in 1967 by Dr Tom Cullity, a Perth cardiologist who had fallen for the great table wines of Europe while working in Britain in the 1950s. When the agronomist Dr John Gladstones published his assessment that the Margaret River district’s climate should suit fine Bordeaux varieties, Cullity — who had already been trialling vines in the state’s south-west from 1965 — acted on it, planting Cabernet Sauvignon, Shiraz, Malbec and Riesling at Wilyabrup. He was the first to do so; every other Margaret River estate, including neighbouring Cullen, followed.

The early years were a struggle against birds, isolation and inexperience, but the wines vindicated the site almost immediately. Vasse Felix made Margaret River’s first serious wines in 1972 — a Cabernet Malbec and a Riesling — and that first Riesling won a gold medal at the 1972 Perth Show, the region’s first real signal to the wider wine world.

The maritime advantage

Margaret River sits on a narrow strip between two oceans, and that maritime setting is its defining feature: warm but moderate summers and cooling sea breezes give a long, even ripening season on free-draining gravelly loam. Cabernet ripens fully here but gently, reaching phenolic ripeness with supple, fine-grained tannin — a rounder counterpoint to the taut, structured Cabernet of Coonawarra’s terra rossa.

The wines today

Under winemaker Virginia Willcock, Vasse Felix has sharpened its focus on the varieties that made the region — Cabernet and Chardonnay. Its pinnacle red is the Tom Cullity (formerly Heytesbury), a Cabernet Sauvignon Malbec drawn from the estate’s original 1967 plantings and named for the founder — a wine that is both a tribute to the region’s origin and, matured in careful oak, one of its benchmarks.