2022 Swinney Syrah

96 POINTS

Ray Jordan

This is part of a triumvirate of wines that showcases the vineyard and winemaking that have crafted these super wines. This is not your fruit bomb Aussie shiraz. This is syrah and there is more than a little Old World style here. The fruit shows an almost luminosity that bursts from the glass. The palate picks up the vineyard characters with its ironstone gravelly rusty characters complementing the bright red fruits. You sense vineyard here with a deft touch of the winemaker simply coaxing a little more out of it.

96 POINTS

Ray Jordan - Winepilot

This is part of a triumvirate of wines that showcases the vineyard and winemaking that have crafted these super wines. This is not your fruit bomb Aussie Shiraz. This is Syrah and there is more than a little Old World style here. The fruit shows an almost luminosity that bursts from the glass. The palate picks up the vineyard characters with its ironstone gravelly rusty notes complementing the bright red fruits. You sense vineyard here with a deft touch of the winemaker simply coaxing a little more out of it.

96 POINTS

Ned Goodwin - JamesSuckling.com

This is the wine of this cooler vintage. The temperature ebbs, peripatetic at times, seem to have disadvantaged those varieties that ripen very late. Here, there are firm but sinuous tannins. A briny nose, demur yet brimming with intent. Dried black olive, pithy and chewy. Iodine, darker fruits, charcuterie, pimento and white pepper, ground across a long skein of freshness, melding with the ferrous and almost gritty salt-crusted tannins. Reminiscent of a good Cornas, this is fine, savory, mid-weighted syrah. Drinkable now, but best from 2027.

95 POINTS

Jeremy Oliver

Exemplary, stylish and rather Old World, it's medium to fullish in weight with genuine resemblance to quality St-Joseph. A musky, floral bouquet of cassis, blackberries, redcurrants and cedar/chocolate oak backed by suggestions of baked earth and licorice is lifted by eastern scents of five spice and cinnamon, plus a whiff of potpourri. There's a hint of menthol as well. Long and layered, with a generous, gravelly palate, it's dry and textural, with a lingering savoury finish. If you're drinking it young, give it plenty of aeration first.

95 POINTS

James Halliday - Halliday Wine Companion

The alluring crimson-purple hue has the antennae waving, and the perfumed, peppery bouquet doesn't disappoint. The wine has that rare combination (for shiraz) of light-bodied intensity. The palate is very long and nuanced, with red and blue fruits waving in the wind. The sensible thing to do is drink up, don't cellar, but then ...

95 POINTS

Erin Larkin - Robert Parker Wine Advocate

The 2022 Syrah brings together a beautiful confluence of a lovely vineyard and a great season. Aromatically, we see sweet balsamic, blackberry, licorice, forest fruits, tea, steel, iodine and alpine herbs. This is a super wine, and I haven't even tasted it yet. On the palate, the wine is fresh and powerful. The tannins are pronounced but chewy and enlivening, with blood orange, saffron, a hint of sandalwood and blackberry. This is a really wonderful wine here, with the classic Frankland River splay of ferruginous tannin, rust and blood. It's super. Decant it; it will only get better, more svelte. 13.9% alcohol, sealed under screw cap.

94 POINTS

Campbell Mattinson - The Wine Front

I looked at this over the course of 24 hours and fair to say that it transformed remarkably over that time. I wasn’t much of a fan on day one, so much so that I asked Gary to take a glance at it as well, which resulted in him using the descriptor “blood lip”, which was not only evocative, but deadly accurate. Blood lip. This wine tastes of blood and rust and iron. It’s a medium weight wine, smoky, meaty, sweet with roasted nut characters, peppery through the tannin as much as through the fruit, juiced with plum and red cherry but, as mentioned, bloody with it, ferrous, rusty, distinctive. It’s a dry wine, almost drying, but yet lengthy, and complex in shape as much as in flavour. In truth I disliked this wine, and then loved it. I’m not sure how that’s possible for the one same wine, but over the course of a day it was. As a result I’m recommending this wine, I think it’s excellent, but I’m also suggesting that it be given a decent-length decant.

92 POINTS

Angus Hughson - Vinous

The finely tuned 2022 Syrah Frankland River has something for everybody as it offers up aromas of dark cherry, rust and Middle Eastern spices with manicured oak. Taut with appreciable energy, it is tightly bound right now but will unfurl into a peacock with time in bottle.