Swinney Farvie Grenache 2023

Cherries, dark raspberries, a little balsamic, some boysenberry exoticism and ethereal spices. Pure and deeply layered. A fragrant fleshiness up front, a plushness to the mid-palate with exquisite gravelly tannins pushing through velvet sheaths to shape the wine and lengthen the finish.

A serious grenache that delivers more depth and woody spice than the 'estate' stablemate, though not without the vineyard stamp of game meat savouriness, violet floral lift, sweet spices, ferrous grunt and depth of cherry and berry fruitiness. This wine feels warmer and richer but loses no finesse in the deeper realms of grenache. There's peppery elements here, too, almost a sweet, turned-earth character and more olive, sea spray and salt bush going on. Tannins sweep through the wine with succulence and feel tight and granitic. It's curiously refreshing and inky in the same frame. Stellar, is the byword.

The Fifty Finest Wines of 2024 2023 Swinney Farvie Grenache (30% whole bunch, 13.8 %alcohol, 100% Wilson’s Pool fruit) has a stunning nose, and it is brutally firm on the palate. It slams your taste buds shut only to open them again to see if they are still alive, and then it invades again without hesitation with extremely forceful and powerful purple fruit notes. It tastes darker than it looks. The colour is a vivid carmine, and this sanguineous colour leads one to anticipate a lighter style, but the acid profile and bitterness deliver a cut lip and bruised nose. The ironstone gravel soils make this an arresting and unforgiving wine. The sudden impact and collateral sensorial damage make it riveting. It shocks and then amazes and almost immediately soothes. It is the angriest and most demonic Grenache with the kindest heart. Half an hour later, the nose is singing, and the brittle edges calm a touch, making it evocative and grown-up, making the more open and icecreamy Grenaches seem uncomplicated and two-dimensional. The tension on the finish is what sets this wine and its siblings apart. It is unique from these varieties’ perspective. This is one of the most impressive Farvie Grenaches to date, and it continues a run of wines that defies comprehension.