2024 Swinney Farvie Syrah

98 POINTS

Ken Gargett - Winepilot

Syrah, or Shiraz, from the Frankland River region has certainly established itself has one of the most exciting styles of the grape in the country. This release is from the Powderbark Vineyard (66%) and Wilson’s Pool (34%). The fruit is hand-picked and fed to a French oak vat, and two demi-muids. The team use 67% whole bunches in the ferment. The wine spends ten days on skins and eleven months maturing in large format, older French oak. The colour is a vibrant purple magenta. On the nose we have notes of leather and truffles, animal hides, charcuterie, black fruits, beef stock, soy, hints of florals and a touch of blackcurrants. There is real power here, but everything is in balance. Good intensity throughout with juicy acidity and abundant, fine, powdery tannins. A wine which will easily see out the next fifteen to twenty years.

96 POINTS

Jeremy Oliver

A stunning shiraz made in a serious, long-term northern Rhone style. Laced with heady scents of musky spices, cracked pepper and dark flowers, its deep core of bright black, blue and red berries and dark plums entwines around fresh, smoky/cedar oak with undertones of vanilla and dark chocolate. As it breathes it becomes more mineral and deeply layered. Underpinned by drying, crunchy tannins of genuine firmness, it's superbly long and mouthfilling, delivering a powerful bur measured expression of pristine fruit that simply soaks up some showy oak. Looking even better a day after opening, it's a superbly stylish, complex and balanced shiraz that finishes dark and savoury, with a mouthwatering acidity and a lingering note of black licorice.

96 POINTS

Campbell Mattinson - The Wine Front

This is bold, grunty and svelte at once. To borrow a phrase: it’s Frankland River Grange. It’s pounded with tannin, dark berried, creamy to the touch and inflected with mint, bitumen, violets, iodine and red earth. As ‘much’ as it is on the palate, the follow through of the finish is exceptional. It was a dry old creek before blood and plums started charging through it. That’s the vibe here. Salt of the earth, as a drink. Aussie bush and Aussie berries, soft and extracted, dry and elongated.

95 POINTS

Erin Larkin - Robert Parker Wine Advocate

The darkest of the three Farvie wines released in this vintage, the 2024 Farvie Syrah leads with a nose populated by dark fruit and spices to match. There are notes of blackberry, blueberry, mulberry and blood plum, alongside licorice dark chocolate and tapenade. The tannins here make a show on the palate, with a gravelly undercurrent of texture that speaks clearly of the season but more eloquently of the site. The gravelly ironstone soils are echoed in the wine, and it is this synchronicity that makes these wines so special. It's a black, graphite, cooling expression of Syrah in this vintage. There are notes of pressed flowers, too. 13.8% alcohol, sealed under screw cap.