2023 Swinney Farvie Grenache

** Highly Rated **
Critic Reviews

99 Points - Ray Jordan, www.winepilot.com, March 2025
A remarkable Grenache that captures much of the winemaking and viticultural philosophy with this wine sourced from the bush vine Wilson’s Pool Vineyard. The fruit was hand-picked, berry sorted and gravity-fed to French oak fermenters where 30 % whole bunches and wild fermentation have accentuated the bright spicy characters. The oak is all fine-grained large format season French which did its thing for 10 months. The oak continues to play a more subordinate role with a greater percentage of whole bunches being used these days. Coupled with the earlier picking approach it captures the coolness and crunchy freshness style that is becoming the hallmark of the style. The palate is unlike any other Australian Grenache with its precise arrow-straight acidity fired with telling accuracy to a target that eventually reveals deeper succulent fruit flavours. It is still tightly wrapped with firmness and tension. A wine of a touch of brash youthfulness and serious intensity.

98+ Points - Erin Larkin, www.roberparker.com, March 2025
The 2023 Farvie Grenache bears all the hallmarks of the tremendous 2023 vintage: It has levity and grace, detail and freshness, without weight. It is intense, with a core of pure fruit, and the wine has a lower pH and higher acid thanks to the seasonal conditions, with 30% whole bunches and fermentation in old oak, with maturation in large-format old oak. The vineyard is highly attractive; there are bush vines on the crest of a sloping, sun-drenched hill, and the wines convey that windswept freshness and structure. I love the fruit here—a core of raspberry, strawberry, blood plum and even cranberry—yet it is the tannins that I must look to for critical assessment; here, they are pliable, fresh, spicy, savory and veritably plume through the fruit. This is seamless structure and ductile length at its best. This is an exciting wine, all the more so given it is from the spectacular 2023 vintage. We have so little framework for premium Grenache outside of South Australia, and yet here, in Frankland River, the high-tide mark is set. I'll be saying this frequently throughout the 2023 releases from Western Australia: this is the best Grenache made yet under the Farvie label.

19.5/20 Points  - Matthew Jukes, The Fifty Finest Wines of 2024, www.matthewjukes.com, January 2025
2023 Swinney Farvie Grenache (30% whole bunch, 13.8 %alcohol, 100% Wilson’s Pool fruit) has a stunning nose, and it is brutally firm on the palate. It slams your taste buds shut only to open them again to see if they are still alive, and then it invades again without hesitation with extremely forceful and powerful purple fruit notes. It tastes darker than it looks. The colour is a vivid carmine, and this sanguineous colour leads one to anticipate a lighter style, but the acid profile and bitterness deliver a cut lip and bruised nose. The ironstone gravel soils make this an arresting and unforgiving wine. The sudden impact and collateral sensorial damage make it riveting. It shocks and then amazes and almost immediately soothes. It is the angriest and most demonic Grenache with the kindest heart. Half an hour later, the nose is singing, and the brittle edges calm a touch, making it evocative and grown-up, making the more open and icecreamy Grenaches seem uncomplicated and two-dimensional. The tension on the finish is what sets this wine and its siblings apart. It is unique from these varieties’ perspective. This is one of the most impressive Farvie Grenaches to date, and it continues a run of wines that defies comprehension.