“Xanadu is all about creating expressive, regional wines of uncompromising quality.” – Halliday’s Wine Companion

Xanadu • \ZAN-uh-doo\ • noun.: an idyllic, exotic, or luxurious place.

Hope you too are in an idyllic, exotic, or luxurious place on this first weekend of 2025. However, we must request that you put down the mimosa, pause the college football game, or pull over to a safe and secure spot to lock down this idyllic, exotic, or luxurious-ness.

Because a 95-point white Bordeaux clone for $22 has just landed. If you want your whites packed with “all the requisite tropical fruit flavors” but don’t want them syrupy, sweet, or overblown, this is your ticket to paradise.

How they do it remains an enigma. Yet the premium Margaret River growing region, sitting at Australia’s Westernmost tip, seems to churn out wines that overdeliver in every meaning of the word.

Halliday’s Wine Companion announced the launch of a new frontier with fanfare, “Margaret River is a place of spectacular beauty, where its residents are just as likely to surf before work – or during their lunch break – as they are to be involved in producing the region’s revered wine. That’s certainly the case for Xanadu winemakers Glenn Goodall and Brendan Carr.”

It’s no coincidence that a couple of years later, Halliday’s awarded Goodall with the 2023 Winemaker of the Year award. Rocking stuff, this truly brilliant blend of 74% Sauvignon Blanc with 26% Semillon offers fabulous notes of citrus rind, lemon curd, and honeysuckle in a laser-focused, tight, magnificently textured package. This beauty represents crazy good value in its league and shows its great terroir well.

All that for $22? As Master Oogway of Kung Fu Panda says, “tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That’s why it’s called the “present”. And what a gift this is…

A ridiculous bargain and a case buy at that, no doubt!

95 Points – James Halliday’s Wine Companion “What makes this such a great drink is that it has all the requisite vibrant tropical fruit flavours but everything is dialed down, so it’s not overt. Lemons and limes douse the feijoa, passionfruit and pith, basil and pine-needle flavours, and there’s a smidge of Splice Pine Lime ice cream. It has texture, energy, and finishes on an acid high.”