Cullen Wines Diana Madeline 2021

In 1965, Kevin and Diana Cullen were about to plant lupins on their Wilyabrup farm when a friend, Dr John Gladstones, talked them out of it. He’d just completed a landmark study identifying Wilyabrup as the single best pocket of the entire Margaret River region for growing Cabernet Sauvignon. The Cullens planted their first vines in 1971, and Diana became Chief Winemaker in 1981, making history the following year as the first woman ever to win a trophy at the Perth Royal Show. After Kevin’s passing in 1994 and Diana’s in 2003, their daughter Vanya, who’d been working at the winery since 1983 and took over as Chief Winemaker in 1989, renamed the estate’s flagship red in her parents’ honour. Vanya has since taken Cullen even further: introducing organic farming in 1998, achieving full biodynamic certification in 2004, and earning an OAM in 2023 for her services to Australian wine. Diana Madeline is entirely estate-grown from the original Cullen Vineyard, with Cabernet Sauvignon planted in 1971, Merlot and Cabernet Franc in 1976 and Malbec in 1978, dry-farmed on old granite and gravelly sandy loam over lateritic subsoil, hand-harvested according to the biodynamic calendar, and matured around 14 to 18 months in French oak, roughly half of it new.

The result has been a genuine Australian benchmark for over four decades, twice named James Halliday’s Best Cabernet Blend and described by Wine Advocate’s Erin Larkin as “the perfect example of great Australian Cabernet: power without weight.” Expect a powerful, layered nose of cherry, chocolate, rose, violet and curry leaf, opening onto a palate of ethereal, fine-grained fruit, with juicy cassis and mulberry framed by firm, silky tannins and a long, mineral, saline finish that critics repeatedly liken to iron filings and gravel.