2016 Vasse Felix Cabernet Sauvignon Margaret River Australia 750 ml

Iconic wines—we love it every time they cross our tasting table, and we’re even tougher on them than we are on the upstarts. So when we poured the legendary Vasse Felix Cabernet Sauvignon Margaret River at our weekly judging panel, we looked forward to the first taste, and to holding the Margaret River mainstay to the high standard they’ve set over a half century.  

We put our nose in the glass and took the first sip—and any doubts about Vasse Felix being at the very top of their game were washed away in a wave of crème de cassis and blackberry preserves accented with cedar, clove, and cigar box. With its dark fruit palate carried on an elegant frame and finishing with a beautifully refined tannic grip, this is the kind of exceptional Cabernet that put Vasse Felix, and the entire region of Margaret River, on the map.

It’s rare to see this kind of quality in a $40 Cabernet from anywhere in the world, which is why the 2016 has wowed critics on both sides of the equator: James Halliday’s Wine Companion praised it as “highly savoury, classically styled and eminently gulpable,” and James Suckling called it “a beautiful Cabernet” in his 95-point review. 

Don’t miss this chance to stock up on Cabernet from one of the world’s benchmark estates. 

It’s one thing to be the first in a world-class region. It’s another to stay on top, and Vasse Felix is “one of Australia’s treasures,” according to Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate, a legend whose wines are “definitely worth the hunt.” The estate even notched Wine Enthusiast’s New World Winery of the Year award in 2017, fifty years after their debut. 

Vasse Felix is where Dr. Tom Cullity planted Margaret River’s first vines in 1967. He’d spent years hunting for the ideal site, eventually finding it among deep gravelly loam atop clay subsoils along a swath of land not four miles east of the Indian Ocean. Cullity named it “Home Vineyard” and planted Shiraz, Chardonnay, Malbec, and Cabernet Sauvignon. 

Nearly half a century later, Wine Spectator’s Matt Kramer would highlight Margaret River as one of “The World’s Most Overlooked Fine-Wine Regions,” Kramer wrote: “The top rank of Margaret River Chardonnay and Cabernet is, simply put, in the top rank of the world. And by that, I’m including the likes of Burgundy (for the Chardonnay) and Bordeaux and Napa Valley (for Cabernet Sauvignon).”

Vasse Felix’s vineyards bask in a Mediterranean climate thanks to cleansing and constant breezes off the Southern and Indian oceans, which mitigate temperatures and allow grapes to achieve marvelous physiological ripeness over an entire growing season. Now helmed by winemaker Virginia Willcock—a three-decade veteran of Margaret River who has won several Winemaker of the Year awards in Australia and was a 2014 Wine Enthusiast Winemaker of the Year nominee—the winery is putting out the kind of wines that would make them legendary, if they weren’t already. 

This is a must-have, whether you wonder what makes a legend, or just want to pack your cellar with one of the most outstanding estate Cabernet values in the world.