Swinney 'Farvie' Syrah 2023 - In Bond

20+/20 - Matthew Jukes, The Fifty Finest Wines of 2024, January 2025

"Finally, the featured wine in this extraordinary trio.  2023 Swinney Farvie Syrah employs 55% whole bunches, 13.7% alcohol, and the fruit is derived 70% Powderbark B2 and 30% Wilson’s Pool.  This is a super-closed and incredibly combative wine, and all the action happens in pin-drop silence.  This is a quiet assassin, and the tension throughout is remarkable. It is not easy to determine the grape variety on first taste, and nor should it be because the vineyard and its intense minerality speak louder than the flesh and skins of the grapes. The frictive layers of anti-fruit silently fall away to reveal a spectacular statuesque Syrah. Toned, lithe, brightly fruited and yet immovable, there is not a molecule out of place, and it stands riveted to the spot with a commanding gaze and unshakable temperament."

99 points – Ray Jordan 

“Deep black and dark red colour with touches of purple. There is a sweet and beautiful spicy freshness and energy that bursts from the glass. This wine is about feel, and there is a saline minerality and alkaline character combining with an almost glazed shimmering sheen. It is a wine that is both detailed and expansive with layered revealing textures and flavours burning within. The fruit is from dry-grown vertically trellised vines on the Powerbark and Wilson’s Pool vineyards. And the detail comes from the hand-picking, berry-sorting approach before gravity feeding the two demi muids with a 55 per cent whole bunch component. A remarkable wine that challenges our greatest shiraz albeit with a stylistic difference.”