Most Western Australian wine enthusiasts will know of Voyager Estate, even if only for the scale of the investment it represents today. This vineyard, whose chequered career commenced as ‘Freycinet Estate’ under the ownership of WA viticulturist Peter Gherardi, has been totally reinvented by Michael Wright who bought it in 1991, gave it a new name, a new identity and a new profile. Not to mention a very glossy exterior. A whitewashed Cape Dutch styled edifice is the public front of Voyager Estate. It dominates its landscape as if originally intended for the Napa Valley or Disneyland and is even complete with an authentic slave bell of entirely questionable taste. That aside, it’s for its new wines that Voyager is likely to become better known, especially for those made from the mainstream Margaret River varieties of chardonnay, cabernet sauvignon and merlot. The chardonnay is already a cult wine over in WA, although perhaps a little too early for mine. The 1996 vintage is clearly the most impressive to date, a sumptuous and perhaps immodest wine in the modern, show-off style. The ripe, concentrated fruit entirely justifies its deluxe treatment in oak, although I find some splintery edges where smoothness should be. The acids, tart and minerally today, will also need time to tone down and integrate. Another two years should see this rich, fleshy chardonnay which sports all the regional grapefruit and melon flavours, spicy/smoky oak and creamy, leesy and butterscotch complexity, settle down into an eye-catching wine. I rate the wine at 17.6 and suggest it will perform at its best between 1998-2001. Its retail price is $28. The wine represents to me a clear step up from the previous vintage (1995, 16.4), which is today looking excessively brassy and over-oaked. There’s little question that it takes time for things to fall into place if you set your heart on making a deluxe chardonnay in the full-orchestra style, as Voyager has chosen to do. You need mature vines whose flavours will hold their ground and develop as the wine matures in the bottle and marries with oak. You need experience handling the vineyard’s fruit and in understanding the consequences of different winemaking techniques as they directly apply to it. You need to have erred to have learned. I have no doubt whatsoever that Voyager Estate will become a leading maker of Margaret River chardonnay. It has managed to get within touching distance in a very short period of time. The 1994 Cabernet Merlot is by far the best wine Voyager Estate has yet released. A superb, savoury claret style with layers of fruit and texture, it stands all over the more herbaceous, jammy wine from 1993 (16.8/20). Its two years in French oak have developed a tight harmony between fruit and oak, while its firm, drying tannins are so well balanced the wine is a sure bet for the long-term cellar. The wine presents a deep, earthy nose of plums, violets, cassis and small red berry fruit tightly knit with the creamy, cedar, clove vanilla flavours derived from new oak. Robust and assertive, but creamy, refined and concentrated enough to even be approachable today, the palate is packed with the flavours of plums, tart sour cherries and classic regional earthy influence. Long, persistent, strong in its grip, the wine will easily develop in the bottle until at least 2006. It retails at $28 and I rate it 18.3. Again, given the comparative youth of the vineyard and the dramatic recent improvement in red wine making, you have every reason to expect Voyager Estate to shortly join the Margaret River elite.
