Magpie swoops on cellar door

After more than 12 years of spruiking its wines from the patio of an onsite homestead, boutique winery Swooping Magpie has built a cellar door facility.

Owner Neil Tuffield told the Times he felt the time was right to move the family-owned Yallingup winery forward with a conventional tasting and dining area.

“I’ve wanted to do it for a while, but as most things do, it took a while to come to fruition,” he said.

“It’s been a three-year process – it took about 12 months of planning and another two to build it up.”

The new building would offer the winery an opportunity to grab a greater share of the wine-experience market, Mr Tuffield said.

It would include a tasting area and garden café so everyone could enjoy visiting the estate, he said.

“It’s appealing to a broader range of visitors,” he said.

“We will be serving coffee, cakes, tea and we’ll be developing some vineyard platters in the near future.

“Our research showed that people preferred a lighter meal with tastings, so that’s the direction we went for.”

The facility would complement the winery’s intentions and appeared like a cosy, rustic cottage fronted by a big grassed area, Mr Tuffield said.

“We didn’t want it to be a big, intrusive cellar door, which seems to be the trend a bit lately,” he said.

“We’re hosting people, so there won’t be a party atmosphere as such.”

And while they were just happy to have the building up and running with some new staff on board, he said the winery expected to do a formal launch early next year.