Pioneering spirit: this longstanding cellar door remains a key Margaret River address

Sydney Morning Herald

5 days ago

Some people spell 'Willyabrup' the traditional way with two Ls. Others write it with just one L. Everyone, however, agrees that Willyabrup was where this one-time dairy hub began its transformation to food and wine Valhalla following the planting of the region's first commercial vineyards in the late '60s by, among others, doctors Kevin Cullen and the aforementioned Tom Cullity. So begins the story of Margaret River wine. So begin the stories of, respectively, Cullen Wines and Vasse Felix.
While Kevin's daughter Vanya oversees Cullen's day-to-day, Vasse was bought by the Holmes à Court family in 1987 and looks very much like a showpiece cellar door managed by an organisation with deep pockets. Admired from afar, its two-storey stone-and-timber digs are a picture of pastoral, '80s-era country living. Inside though, the sleek ground-floor tasting room – all clean of line and dark of lighting – betrays an interest in contemporary, clean-cut design.
Upstairs, the first-floor restaurant is beautified with equally modern accents – think black steel, sharp angles and a muted palette – yet natural light aplenty, a soaring vaulted ceiling plus the chance to enjoy lunch overlooking the good doctor's original plantings serve as reminders that you're in the country and that this is where the opening chapter of Margaret River's wine story unfolded. The layered, globetrotting cooking, however, looks and tastes unmistakably now.
A salty, puffy 'flatbread' calls to mind the savoury anpan doughnuts found at Japanese convenience stores, yet the pickled mussels, fennel and sweet-cooked onion piled atop are distinctly Nordic. There's a similar east-meets-west groove to the tartare of diced kangaroo bound in a gutsy Korean fermented chilli sauce and moulded onto a grilled rice cake of pleasing crunch and chew: think of it as sushi for discerning UFC bros.