Moss Wood

A bit like Marlborough in New Zealand, Western Australia’s Margaret River was pretty much virgin territory for wine half a century ago. Kevin Mugford still remembers the early days, when prospectors ‘would drive down to Margaret River at weekends, with a shovel, in search of the best gravelly loam soils’ on the basis of a 1966 report by botanic research scientist Dr John Gladstones, who viewed the region’s frost-free and maritime climate as similar to Bordeaux. Among those pioneers was obstetrician Dr Bill Pannell (now owner of Picardy in Pemberton, and whose son Stephen is the ‘S’ of acclaimed McLaren Vale producer SC Pannell) who established Moss Wood as just the second winery in the region in 1969. Ten years later, having never been to Margaret River himself, and on the basis purely of a telephone interview, Mugford, a graduate of the noted viticultural college Roseworthy, was employed as winemaker. Six years after that, with his wife Clare, a nurse, Mugford bought the property from the Pannells, and has been there ever since, today running it with sons Hugh and Tristan. Bordeaux remains the benchmark for the estate’s renowned, supremely elegant and ageworthy Cabernet, a benchmark of Australian wine. Similarly traditional, precise winemaking is followed for Semillon and Sauvignon Blanc, along with Chardonnay, and, in something of a Margaret River collector’s item, a Pinot Noir.