No journey to Margaret River is complete without visiting Ashbrook Estate, and driving down the karri-tree lined avenue through the beautiful Wilyabrup countryside to the cellar door, winery and vineyard.

Established by the Devitt family in 1975 as the region’s tenth winery, Ashbrook is highly awarded and accoladed across its premium, single-vineyard range of aromatic white wines and classic reds. The estate has won significant trophies for its riesling, semillon, sauvignon blanc and verdelho wines and James Halliday named the 2002 Chardonnay Australia’s best when it was released in 2004. The Bordeaux-style cabernet sauvignon and Northern Rhone-style shiraz wines have received countless gold and silver medals, with the most recent gold medal scores awarded to the currently released 2017 Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon.

Ashbrook has been truly family-owned and -operated for forty-eight years. Currently at the helm, having completed his forty-sixth vintage in 2023, is Brian Devitt, an organic chemist, footballer and cricketer. Alongside him is his wife Carol, WA’s first female Rhodes Scholar, a businesswoman and mother of four children. Their elder daughter Catherine is now senior winemaker, and their elder son Richard, also a winemaker, manages the vineyard. Son-in-law Kingsley Edwards oversees domestic and international sales.

Sixteen hectares of grapes, mostly under a lyre trellis, to maximise fruit intensity, minimise green characters, eliminate disease and reduce spraying, produce around 12,000 cases per annum. All grapes are hand-picked and meticulously processed from start to finish by the family using state-of-the-art equipment. Ashbrook catches and uses 100% filtered rainwater for winery operations and has its own bottling, labelling and packaging facility.

As part of its environmental credentials and concerns, fifteen years ago the family placed a hundred (of 500) acres of pristine, mature, Jarrah forest under a Conservation Covenant to provide a sanctuary for native flora and fauna species and to preserve it for future generations forever.