EMERGING STRONGER

WHEN THE OWNERS OF Glenarty Road learned in April that they’d been named Margaret River’s Cellar Door with Best Food by Gourmet Traveller Wine, they were thrilled, and crestfallen. Usually, the phone would ring off the hook after such an award, but the tables in the machinery shed-turned-restaurant were empty due to COVID-19.

Glenarty Road has since been able to reopen, and in the meantime generated an income with its winemaking business and sales of their grass-fed Glenarty Lamb, reared on the picturesque 100-hectare property at Karridale, 90 kilometres south of Busselton in WA. Located on loamy, undulating hills around the Blackwood River, the vineyard was planted by Ben McDonald by hand when he was just 19.

“To be honest I was pretty rubbish at making wine,” Ben, now 41, says of his early attempts. But when Sasha — an eager young winemaker from Perth