Swinney Farvie Syrah 2023

The 2023 Farvie was hand-harvested from a parcel of vines planted to Jack Mann’s heritage mass-selection Syrah. In the relatively cooler conditions of 2023, the wine is marked by a distinct Szechuan pepper, Cornas-like spice and structure, according to Mann. The fruit was sorted berry by berry in the winery, and again, in response to the cooler conditions, the bunch component was kept at a well-judged 55% (warmer years have seen up to 65% inclusion), to highlight the wine’s lightness of texture while also encouraging bright, spicy aromatics. Everything was gravity-fed to a French oak vat and demi-muids for wild fermentation. The wine spent 15 days on skins before being pressed to large, fine-grained, seasoned French oak, where it rested for 10 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. “I’m more interested in perfume, florals and personality than I am in the wine having heavy density and richness,” he explains. “By using no new oak, you have to think a bit harder about how to build complexity, structure and perfume in Syrah,” he goes on. “We build that complexity through viticulture, bunches and time on lees.”