2020 Woodlands Margaret Cabernet Sauvignon, Margaret River

This is a personal favourite. It's a 68% cabernet, 22% malbec and 10% merlot blend. Such a good vintage captured perfectly to reveal all the power and concentration with a deft hand creating an elegant and finely tuned finish. Super intense cabernet fruit dominates with that graphite and slightly oyster shell minerality helping to focus and present through its long finish. The oak has been beautifully handled. Drink to 2042.

97 points Ray Jordan, Wine Review 2026

78/13/9% cabernet sauvignon/malbec/merlot. A lovely Margaret with its heady aromas of violets, cedary oak, mulberries, nori and Dutch licorice. It feels cool across the fuller-weighted palate, lots of tannins yet shapely and fine bolstered by oak tannins, too. A pop of fruit sweetness comes up and the acidity pulls it all together through to a long finish. A complete wine now but will last some distance. Drink to 2035.

96 points (Special Value) Jane Faulkner for Halliday Wine Companion, April 2024

Deep colour with a tinge of purple in the rim and aromas of blackberry, mulberry and cassis, with a high-note of sweet violets. The wine is full bodied and firmly structured wiht plenty of firm tannins and notes of briar and cedar that linger on the extended palate. An elegant and quietly powerful red that has the structure to cellar really well. Drink to 2036.

95 points Huon Hooke for The Real Review, February 2024

Woodlands was established in 1973 by David and Heather Watson. It was one of the first five vineyards to be planted in Margaret River, today drawing fruit from the original Caves Road vineyard as well as the nearby Woodlands Brook vineyard, both in the northern Wilyabrup sub-region and the latter somewhat further away from the coast. The vineyards cover 28 hectares and are dry-grown and hand-tended. The original Woodland vineyard is today certified organic, while Woodlands Brook is organic-in-conversion, with viticultural practices at both sites also including nods to biodynamic principles. Woodlands remains a family-owned producer, with brothers Andrew and Stuart Watson continuing their parents’ work.

1992 saw the debut of the Margaret, a Cabernet Sauvignon-dominant blend from the Caves Road vineyard named after Heather Watson’s great grandmother. The final 2020 blend includes healthy amounts of Malbec and was shaped by a season of low rainfall and warmer than average temperatures, with very good to excellent quality across the region. Hand-picked and sorted, the de-stemmed fruit fermented in stainless steel and matured for nearly two years in French oak barrels of which approximately 40% were new.

Captivating aromas of black fruit and violets with some reductive and cedary notes. Concentrated and intense fruit on a full-bodied palate with graphite notes and layers of fine but firm tannins. Expands in the glass, with a long finish.

Good cellaring potential. Margaret River Cabernets can appear closed at random moments on the aging curve, but this wine should have no trouble in developing beautifully well into the 2030s.

Keep things simple with ribeye cooked over ironbark charcoal and finished with flaky sea salt and a side of roasted root vegetables or play with the textural elements of braised duck legs with shiitake and wood-ear mushrooms.