2025 saw another warm and dry year which, alongside well-maintained vine vigour and good vine health, allowed the Swinney team to harvest 1-2 weeks earlier than avaerage. The fruit was pristine and intensely concentrated: a winemakers dream.

The first key to understanding Swinney’s Riesling style is to appreciate the farming. All blocks are organic and dry-farmed, the vines are cane-pruned and the row orientation is north to south. The team uses shade cloth in the Riesling blocks, protecting the bunches from excessive sun exposure and avoiding any roasted character in the fruit. Such precise vineyard management goes some way to explaining the wine’s purity and transparency.

The second key is in the cellar, where Rob Manns’s search for structure and texture reigns supreme. The fruit (from two of Swinney’s oldest blocks in the Powderbark vineyard) is whole bunch-pressed and fermented with indigenous yeast in stainless steel with a high component of solids. This approach “builds nuance and a saline core in the wine”, according to Mann. He’s not looking for austerity, rather he is seeking something more textural and aromatic with flavour complexity and a high degree of fruit purity.

Matt Swinney’s affection for the Southern Rhône and Priorat led him to plant bush-vine Grenache on Swinney’s ironstone hilltops in the 1990s. Grenache was hardly known in the area at the time, and there were many raised eyebrows in the region when the news got out. Matt’s hunch has since proved correct, and Swinney is now setting a new standard for Australian Grenache. Erin Larkin does not overstate the significance of Swinney’s wine, writing, “the Grenache, particularly, is a tremendously important wine not only in the context of this vineyard but of the Great Southern Region and, indeed, on a national level, for Australia.” Meanwhile, Max Allen has noted that, “the [Swinney] grenache, in particular, tastes like no other Australian example of this variety and will change perceptions of the Frankland region...”

Each year, the Swinney Grenache is picked by hand from the well-established, dry-grown bush vines on the Wilsons Pool vineyard’s rich gravel/loam soils. Each vine was passed over multiple times to harvest only perfectly ripe fruit. The bunches were then destemmed and sorted berry by berry. This year, Rob Mann worked with 40% bunches—bolstering the structural frame to balance the intensely aromatic, flavourful fruit—in a combination of small wooden fermenters and stainless-steel tanks. The wine spent two weeks on skins before being pressed to large (3600-litre), seasoned French wood for 11 months’ maturation. Sitting pretty in the red-fruited spectrum, Mann notes that the warmer conditions of 2024 were ideal for the Grenache, which, despite the conditions, recorded higher acidity than in any preceding vintage. That freshness has brought bags of clarity and energy to another unflinching Swinney Grenache.

Echoing what has been said many times about Swinney’s Grenache, it is rare to find a Mourvèdre of this purity and distinction from Australian shores. This is Swinney’s fourth straight Mourvèdre bottling, and the wine is basking in the spotlight. The Mourvèdre is drawn from dry-grown bush vines on Wilsons Pool Vineyard, planted in the early 2000s on rich, gravelly-loam soils. The fruit was picked by hand when flavour and tannin were perfectly ripe, then sorted berry by berry and transferred via gravity to a single stainless-steel fermenter. It fermented with 18% whole bunches to highlight the variety’s “distinctive ferrous qualities, fine structure and wild spice.” The new vintage spent 11 days on skins before being pressed to fine-grained large-format French oak, where it matured for 11 months. Speaking to the sheer, visceral originality of this wine, Mann says that “there’s something of Swinney here that no one can replicate.” Enigmatic, maybe, but also very true.

That Swinney’s Syrah has been described by one writer as “more Hermitage than Grange” gives you a clue where the style and quality level is pitched. Already a WA benchmark, the Syrah is hand-harvested from select parcels in the Wilsons Pool vineyard and from 30-year-old vines in the Powderbark vineyard. Unlike the Grenache and Mourvèdre, the Syrah is trellised—although there are plans afoot for some single-stake Syrah. The sites are planted to various clones, including 470, Waldron and Jack Mann’s heritage mass-selection Syrah. Each clone gives a different bunch structure. Combined with the Estate’s use of shade cloth to shield the fruit from the harsh afternoon rays, this helps build layers of structural complexity in the final wine. The cloth also creates soft, mottled light, lowers the temperature in the bunch zone, and preserves freshness, spice and typicity (varietal and regional) in the fruit.

As always, the quality is in the details: berries were hand-sorted into small wooden and stainless-steel fermenters via gravity, and the wine includes 22% whole bunches to maintain freshness while providing a robust frame for the lustrous fruit. The 2024 spent 11 days on skins before being pressed directly to 600-litre fine-grained demi-muids. The Shiraz is the only wine to see any new oak, and just 8% in this vintage. The fruit intensity here is beautifully measured by long, sinewy tannins and compelling energy. “We’re not afraid of having some structure in the wines,” say Mann. “We make wines with spine. They should make you hungry.”

Mourvèdre calls the shots in the 2024 rosé to the tune of 90% of the blend. Vermentino plays a key cameo to bring racy freshness, while Cinsault adds a dash of cherry-fruited flesh. Despite the atypically warm conditions, Rob Mann explains the season delivered fruit of “tremendous depth and intensity with balanced, high natural acidity”. He allowed a full five months on lees in seasoned barriques to dial up the vivacity and texture of a wine that promises to keep charting the course of great Aussie rosé.

Most of the fruit is drawn from dry-grown bush vines on Powderbark Vineyard’s ironstone gravel hilltop. With a focus on freshness, the fruit from these vines was picked on the cusp of full maturity. The Mourvèdre was then pressed as bunches using a traditional, ultra-light Champagne cycle along with a small percentage of Vermentino for its freshening acid streak and a splash of flesh-giving Cinsault. The juice was run directly to seasoned French oak barriques and fermented with indigenous yeasts.

With a touch more colour this year, it’s wonderfully aromatic, with high-toned notes of citrus, berries, wet slate, provençal herbs and an inviting, refreshing tonic lift. The muscle of 2024 is there, apparent in the powerful, complex flavours, silky weight and base notes of wet minerals and iron, earth and salt. Spice and fresh acid cut, too, and it has a long draw. Dimension and detail—this is a class act.

Take a walk through Swinney’s untrellised Grenache bush vines, and things change about halfway down the block planted in 2004 on the estate’s upper northeast-facing hillside crest. The gravel gets deeper, and there is less clay. “That’s Farvie,” says Rob Mann. This fruit is different, too; it is more ferrous and mineral with fine, velvety tannins and so much complexity. Vines are picked over multiple passes, with only the best bunches from each vine—those sitting in the dappled light of the vine’s architecture—set aside for Farvie.

The bunches are berry sorted, then gravity-fed to French oak for natural fermentation, incorporating 30% bunches. Small bunches and berries in 2023 resulted in fruit of intense colour and concentration, so this year, the wine is 100% Grenache (previous releases have included small amounts of Mourvèdre). The wine spent 11 days on skins before being pressed to large, fine-grained, seasoned French oak vessels, where it matured for 10 months. Rob Mann was happily surprised with the depth of colour in this year’s release: “The bunches were loose, and the berries were small in 2023, so the colour is this amazing deep purple. It’s a freak of a wine,” he told us, “but a very exciting one.”

Winemaker Rob Mann says this is “the most audacious, emotive wine” of the trio. It’s crafted from a draconian selection of dry-grown bush-vine bunches on the same kidney-shaped patch of dirt as the vines for the Farvie Grenache in the Wilson’s Pool Vineyard. The vines here face northeast on leaner topsoil and with a higher percentage of coarse lateritic gravel; the roots have now made it down into the clay beneath. Meticulous fruit-thinning and selective hand-harvesting over multiple passes ensures Swinney achieves fruit that is as close to perfect as possible.

As was the case in 2022, bunches and berries were small, requiring a moderation in the use of whole bunches in the ferment. Where this wine can sometimes be 100%, the proportion was a well-integrated 66% this year. According to Mann, the Farvie Mourvèdre works beautifully with stem inclusion. “It helps to balance the wildness, gaminess and rustiness of the fruit while accentuating the spice element of the wine.”

The wine spent 11 days on skins before being pressed to large, fine-grained, seasoned French oak vessels, where it matured for 10 months. It’s the wildest, most intoxicating of the three Farvie wines, compared evocatively by the maker to a deep dive into a 600-page novel.

The 2023 Farvie was hand-harvested from a parcel of vines planted to Jack Mann’s heritage mass-selection Syrah. In the relatively cooler conditions of 2023, the wine is marked by a distinct Szechuan pepper, Cornas-like spice and structure, according to Mann. The fruit was sorted berry by berry in the winery, and again, in response to the cooler conditions, the bunch component was kept at a well-judged 55% (warmer years have seen up to 65% inclusion), to highlight the wine’s lightness of texture while also encouraging bright, spicy aromatics. Everything was gravity-fed to a French oak vat and demi-muids for wild fermentation. The wine spent 15 days on skins before being pressed to large, fine-grained, seasoned French oak, where it rested for 10 months before bottling.

Mann fosters the Farvie plot’s innate savoury, ironstone and ferrous character, pushing it to take a lead role in the wine. Importantly, no new oak is used in the Farvie Syrah. “I’m more interested in perfume, florals and personality than I am in the wine having heavy density and richness,” he explains. “By using no new oak, you have to think a bit harder about how to build complexity, structure and perfume in Syrah,” he goes on. “We build that complexity through viticulture, bunches and time on lees.”