2023 Xanadu Cabernet Sauvignon, Margaret River

Trophy Best Red Wine IWSC 2025

Trophy Best Cabernet Sauvignon Melbourne Royal Wine Awards 2024

I've tasted some truly wonderful cabernets from Xanadu under this label over many years, but I have to say I've tasted none better than this. It is a simply wonderful example of Margaret River delivered with poise, power, and a certain panache. Captures the vintage well with the power and yet subtle restraint that it's best known for. It's medium to full-bodied but beautifully elegant. With an aroma of classically varietal blackcurrant, dark plums, and a slightly leafy bay leaf sort of character with a trace of minerally oyster shell, leading into a palate that has power and real poise. It's a wine of tremendous brightness and energy. And while it's drinking quite beautifully now, you can guarantee this will cellar for many years. Drink to 2043.

97 points Ray Jordan, Wine Review 2026

Impresses as soon as it’s poured. Deep, dark garnet yet bright. All the varietal and regional aromas and flavours are neatly entwined, offering youthful fruit flavours and savouriness. Superbly balanced with textural, abundant tannins. Nicely drying with fresh acidity pulling everything to a fine, long finish. One of the best to date. Drink 2026 to 2040.

96 points Special Value Jane Faulkner for Halliday Wine Companion, May 2026

The 2023 Cabernet Sauvignon offers a fine, focused blend of blackcurrant and dark earthy aromas with a violet lift and well-proportioned French oak. Tension and focus carry through on the palate, which shows a youthful, tight flavor profile, while dense, gravelly tannins provide a strong finish. A classic in the making and astounding value for money. Drink 2030 to 2040.

95 points Angus Hughson for Vinous, January 2026

90% Cabernet Sauvignon with equal parts Petit Verdot and Malbec. 14 months in 40% new and 60% seasoned oak. Wonderfully elegant from the outset, with warm gravel, graphite and sweet biscuit-like cedar quickly filled out by black olive, cassis and blood plum. Bay leaf emerges with air, and a beautiful nori-like salinity adds intrigue and savoury complexity while firmly stamping the wine’s provenance. The palate is at once svelte and velveteen yet inky in its intensity, carrying the elegant thread while remaining brilliantly powerful. Blackcurrant, graphite, fine cedar, mocha, earth — a funnel of tight-grained tannins pulling it linear alongside black-fruited acidity. The length is excellent. Xanadu continues to fly the flag for Cabernet of beauty and grace. A brilliant release at a frankly outrageous price.

95 points Tom Kline for Wine Pilot, May 2026

Xanadu was founded in 1977 by Dr John Lagan and his wife Eithne and named after the mythical paradise in S.T. Coleridge's poem Kubla Khan. The estate sits in Margaret River's southern reaches, a part of the region more directly exposed to the Southern Ocean than the northern subregions, with alluvial and gravelly soils and a climate shaped by maritime influence throughout the growing season. The Rathbone family acquired the estate in 2005, and under their ownership Xanadu has become one of the region's most awarded producers. The equally decorated Glenn Goodall has been the senior winemaker since that transition. His approach starts in the vineyard, with viticulturist Alex Miller leading sustainable farming across the estate. This producer is consistently delivering on the promise of its name: a vision in a dream.

The 2023 growing season played to Margaret River Cabernet's strengths. A cool, late start followed by a long, dry, mild summer allowed fruit to ripen slowly and retain natural acidity. The result is a vintage that offers both power and composure, with wines built to go the distance.

Predominantly Cabernet Sauvignon with small additions of Malbec and Petit Verdot, the wine was fermented in a combination of open and static vessels with regular aeration as well as hand plunging. The wine was then refined in 40% new French oak barrels for fourteen months.

The Malbec and Petit Verdot add texture, colour and a quiet structural contribution to a wine that remains unmistakably Cabernet. In the glass it's deep garnet with a brightness that belies its density. The nose is classically varietal — cassis, dark plum, dried herb, a faint bay leaf — with a thread of graphite and cedar from the oak sitting neatly in the background. There is a savoury quality to it that resembles nori and oyster shells. The palate is at once powerful and precise, with fine-grained tannins pulling the wine linear and fresh acidity keeping everything taut through a long, focused finish.

Cabernet of this character wants food of equal conviction. It is at home with herb-crusted rack of lamb, a Provençal-style daube or aged hard cheese.

At this price, buy several, and cellar the extra bottles with confidence.