Swinney Farvie Grenache 2023

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.

Ray Jordan

Wine critic, author and journalist at Winepilot

Ray Jordan has been writing about wine for more than 40 years. His first articles were published in the early issues of national wine magazine Winestate in the late 1970s when he worked in Sydney as a newspaper correspondent. From 1989 Ray wrote more than 3000 columns as a regular newspaper wine columnist. He currently writes a regular column for the special business publication Business News and is one of the main contributors to national wine platform Wine Pilot. In 2017 Ray co-authored The Way it Was – A History of The Early Days of the Margaret River Wine Industry and previously wrote Wine in the Blood: Australia’s Family Wine Estates, published in Mandarin and English. In 2011 Ray was awarded WA Wine Press Club Jack Mann Memorial Medal for his contribution to the WA wine industry. His love of wine is as strong as his love of the blues and tasting the thousands of wines that cross his bench each year allows him to indulge in both.

Wine writing