Beaches. Whale watching. The longest timber-piled jetty in the southern hemisphere: for generations of (West) Australians, these were the attractions that visitors associated with the regional hub of Busselton. One thing that Busso wasn’t known for, however, was wine: odd, perhaps, considering the city’s proximity to Margaret River and other winemaking regions. That changed in January with the arrival of South West Wine Shop, a bright and breezy wine bar and bottle shop attached to the Parker Group’s sprawling modern drinking hole, Busselton Pavilion.
As the name suggests, this is a fine place to show a wine rack some love. Whether you’re chasing hard-to-find bottes from local vignerons – Trait Wines, Lillian and Battles are among the small-scale regional producers the shop champions – or benchmarks from further afield, the shelves and fridges here are all-killer, no-filler. (We also dig the raffish handwritten notes affixed to bottles: think bon mots along the lines of “get this before we drink it all” and “life’s not fair but at least we have Sancerre” and other examples of the joyous attitude group wine director Cyndal Petty has towards vino.) But the real fun happens when you keep your party in-house.
The light-filled, crisply designed space maximises that west coast sun and offers a variety of places to settle in. Couples perch side-by-side on stools in the window. Bigger groups gather around both sides of the marble counter. Winos will want to sit as close to cheery shop manager Hayley Ward as possible. Previously in charge of the Vasse Felix cellar door, Ward has the know-how and repartee to recommend the right drink for guests time after time, whether they’re thinking glass or bottle, traditional or new wave.
Polished pub cooking care of Brendan Pratt – another Vasse Felix alum – is another compelling reason to stick around. For the benefit of those in the shop, they’ve whittled down Busselton Pavilion’s main menu into a wine-sympathetic carte highlighting finger-friendly snacks (prawn toast, French onion dip) and meals-for-one (cheeseburger, roast chicken roll) that make sticking around for one more far too easy.
Weekly Friday night tastings and monthly wine club evenings offer further excuses to plot return visits. Admittedly, this contemporary enoteca isn’t the first place in Busselton to have tried championing wine. But thanks to some polished execution and Busso entering its new-tourism-hotspot era – the city now boasts a shiny new Hilton hotel and direct flights from Sydney and Melbourne – South West Wine Shop looks like it’s going to be around for both a good time as well as a long time.
South West Wine Shop
30 Kent St, Busselton WA
(08) 9752 6000
busseltonpavilion.com.au/south-west-wine-shop
Price guide $
Wheelchair access Yes
Open Drinks and Dinner Wed-Sat
Find all finalists for the Gourmet Traveller Wine Bar of the Year Award here. To see the full list of winners in this year’s Gourmet Traveller Annual Restaurant Awards, head over here.
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