The ‘Long Road’ Shiraz from one of our favourite wineries, Whicher Ridge, is a look at Great Southern Shiraz and more specifically, Frankland River Shiraz. This is very reflective of Western Australian Shiraz, a long road away from the Barossa and McLaren Vale. Dark berries and cherries with plenty of white pepper, mixed with a nice spectrum of toasty oak, this is the one.

Whicher Ridge is located in the seaside town of Busselton, two and a half hours drive from Perth, along the stunning Geographe Bay. Aside from extremely long jetties and the ideally flat but still painful Ironman course, Busselton is part of the emerging wine region of Geographe. The region gets its name from the ship that Nicolas Baudin sailed on when he was mapping the coastline of Australia. Neil and Cathy Howard are the delightful team that run Whicher Ridge with a focus on classic West Aussie varieties like Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon and Sauvignon Blanc. Both have many years of experience working across Australia in the wine industry before coming to the conclusion that Western Australia is a great place to call home and settled on their ideal vineyard in 2003. The winery sources fruit from their estate as well as from Margaret River and Great Southern with their flagship wines being Cabernet Sauvignon, Shiraz and a complex Sauvignon Blanc.