2013 Xanadu Wines Cabernet Sauvignon Margaret River Australia 750 ml

#41 Best in the World Cabernet Sauvignon

To those who “can’t find” a good Cabernet for under $30 but refuse to look beyond Napa—well, we don’t know what to tell you. To all other Cabernet lovers, may we present the 2013 Xanadu Cabernet Sauvignon Margaret River. Far from the roasting heat that produces Australia’s densest red wines, Margaret River in Western Australia is warmer than Bordeaux and cooler than Napa Valley—in other words, perfect for Cabernet. The 2013 Xanadu earned 93 points from James Suckling and Wine Enthusiast, which honored it as an Editors’ Choice and the world’s #41 wine of 2017. Perhaps most meaningfully, the 2013 Xanadu won the Cabernet Trophy at Australia’s National Wine Show, and peerless Australian critic James Halliday gave this “great value” a stunning 96-point score. This quality-to-price ratio is a rarity, in Napa or anywhere else. Act accordingly.

The March 2017 headline in Wine Enthusiast grabs the reader: “Why You Should Pay Attention to Australian Cabernet”—which, it argues, offers “compelling competition for Napa and Bordeaux.” Reading a little bit further, it becomes apparent that the praise that Wine Enthusiast heaps on Aussie Cabernets is essentially trained on one region: the idyllic Western Australia outpost of Margaret River.

Margaret River boasts striking similarities to the California Cabernet epicenter of Napa Valley: Both regions seduce visitors with their sun-dappled, slow-paced lifestyles. Both are youthful but stiff competition to the long-established châteaux of Bordeaux. And both captured the imagination of one of the New World’s most legendary winemakers: Robert Mondavi himself was so convinced of the Margaret River’s world-class potential that he flirted with buying a property in Margaret River in the early 1970s. Although he resisted in the end, Mondavi did mentor a pair of legendary Margaret River estates, whose ascent proved that his hunch about the region was dead-on.

Xanadu has been there since Margaret River’s early days. Dr. John Lagan and his wife Eithne planted their first Cabernet Sauvignon and Semillon near the coast in 1977, and now the Xanadu property has over 200 acres of vines planted in Margaret River’s well-drained gravelly soils. Acquired by the Rathbone family in 2005, Xanadu has stayed family-owned and obsessively quality-focused, as evidenced by the estate’s taking top Cabernet at Australia’s National Wine Show five out of the last six years. If this wine were made in Napa, it would be three times the price. Don’t delay.

- Wine Access Wine Team