2025 Vasse Felix Cane Cut Semillon Half Bottle 375ml, Margaret River

Vasse Felix has made this wine for some years now, and it's a lovely example of the dessert style. It's created by cutting the fruiting cane and allowing the bunches to hang and dry out before picking, concentrating the flavours and sugars. It was fermented in French oak. From the outset, it captures so much about this variety. Lemon essence is concentrated on the nose, while the palate shows lovely fruit sweetness, a little of that oak influence, but with fine controlling acidity that gives it focus without cloying. Crunchy minerality creates such a lovely mouthfeel. Drink to 2035.

95 points Ray Jordan Wine Review 2027

This wine is made from Semillon using the cane cut method, where each fruiting cane is detached from the vine. With no access to water, the berries start to shrivel, concentrating sugars, acidity and flavours for up to a month before they are harvested. The method requires great care in vineyard hygiene and precisely timed picking.

The warm, dry and trouble-free 2025 season provided a rare combination of good yields and outstanding quality across all varieties. The canes were cut on 17th of February and hand-picked on the 13th of March, he fruit was de-stemmed, macerated for twenty hours on skins, pressed and racked to two- to seven-year-old French oak barriques for fermentation and maturation for seven months.

A vegan friendly wine with 120g/L residual sugar.

About this producer

Vasse Felix was established by Margaret River pioneer Dr Thomas Brendan Cullity in 1967 and is the region’s founding wine estate, today guided by the Holmes à Court family. One of Australia's most awarded winemakers, Virginia Willcock, has led the wine program since 2006, almost as long as her counterpart in the vineyards, Chief Viticulturist Bart Molony.