2018 Vasse Felix Cabernet Sauvignon Margaret River Australia 750 ml

Nowhere in the world does your Cabernet dollar go further than it does in Margaret River, Australia—and no bottle proves it better than the 2018 Vasse Felix Cabernet Sauvignon Margaret River. Nearly impossible to find in the US and boasting a stunning 96-point score from James Halliday’s Wine Companion, we nabbed a rare allocation at an incredible price.

This is the wine we happily pour for friends who lament a lack of Cabernet value on the market… but have never looked beyond Napa. Vasse Felix is an icon of the Margaret River that Robert Parker called “one of Australia’s treasures,” consistently producing the kind of Cabernet value that is getting harder and harder to find—it was true last time we offered it and it’s even truer today.

Take one sip of the 2018 Vasse Felix and you’ll see how the winery earned its stellar reputation. The Cabernet is awash in black currant, plum, blackberry, and graphite accented by violets, mint, raw chocolate, upturned black earth, and bay laurel. Full and dense on the palate with superb structure and a lengthy finish, it’s exactly what we look for in a great Cabernet, New World or Old, anywhere on the globe. 

In the Wine Companion’s 96-point starred review—the star denoting "a wine considered to offer Special Value for the money within the context of their rating”—they praised this bottle as “powerfully ripe and dense, with epic length of flavour,” and “one of the great-value premium wines of the region.”

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 in a parcel of deep gravelly loam atop clay subsoils, barely 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,” writing: “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 the constant cleansing 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 a 2014 Wine Enthusiast Winemaker of the Year nomination—Vasse Felix is putting out the kind of wines that would make them legendary, if they weren’t already. 

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, this is a must-have bottle.