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Farvie gives a remarkable expression of Australian Shiraz and puts Western Australia back in the conversation regarding benchmarks for this variety. Only a selected soil area in the Wilson’s Pool and Powderbark blocks is earmarked for Farvie Syrah, with the vines fostered to nourish and balance the fruit to optimum levels, allowing for dry farming.
Swinney’s 2022 Syrah was hand-harvested from select parcels planted to a range of clones, including 470, Waldron and Jack Mann’s heritage mass-selection Syrah. In the warmer conditions of 2022, Swinney’s shade cloth played a pivotal role, creating soft, mottled light to protect the skins and lower the temperature in the bunch zone. The fruit was sorted berry-by-berry in the winery, and this year, Rob Mann increased the whole bunch component from 58% (in 2021) to 65% to further promote ethereal structure and lightness of texture while also encouraging bright, spicy aromatics. Everything was gravity-fed to a French oak vat and two demi-muids for wild fermentation. The wine spent only 12 days on skins before being basket-pressed directly to large, fine-grained, seasoned French oak, where it rested for 14 months before bottling.
Mann fosters the Farvie plot’s innate savoury, ironstone and ferrous character, pushing it to take a lead role in the wine. Importantly, no new oak is used in the Farvie Syrah. “By using no new oak, you have to think a bit harder about how to build complexity, structure and perfume in Syrah,” explains Mann. “We build that complexity through viticulture, through bunches and time on lees. I think it’s another reason our Syrah is so distinctly different.”