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 state 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. 

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.”