Few wine regions were born of a scientific paper. In 1965 the agronomist John Gladstones argued that this remote cape on Western Australia's Indian Ocean coast matched Bordeaux's maritime climate — without its harvest rain. Vasse Felix planted the first vines in 1967, and a cluster of doctor-founded estates followed within the decade, testing the hypothesis row by row.
The paper proved right. On gravelly loams between two capes, with surf on three sides moderating every season, Cabernet Sauvignon ripens evenly and almost every year. The style is a claret drinker's cabernet grown ten thousand miles from Pauillac: blackcurrant, bay leaf and gravel, firm but fine tannin, and a restraint unusual for Australia — a region that has never had a bad reason to exist.