Vintage 2023 is, in the words of Rob Mann, “really exciting”. Conditions were ideal; cool and dry, with no prolonged heat spikes. The only downside was below-average yields owing to the dry conditions. As he is wont to do, Mann finds the silver lining, telling us the reduced crop levels meant fruit clarity, freshness and acidities were preserved.

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. In this, he’s nailed it; if you thought the 2022 was good, just wait.

Back in the late 1990s Grenache was hardly known in Western Australia, let alone in the Great Southern. But with a love of top southern Rhône and Priorat wines, Matt Swinney had a hunch and planted the region’s first bush-vine Grenache vineyard. He did so with mass-selection cuttings from David Hohnen and gave his new vines pride of place on the Swinney site’s ironstone hilltops.

Fruit for the 2022 Swinney Grenache was handpicked from the well-established, dry-grown bush vines on the Wilsons Pool vineyard’s rich gravel/loam soils. In the vineyard, each vine was passed over multiple times, ensuring only perfect fruit was harvested. In the cellar, the fruit was destemmed and sorted berry by berry. Fermentation occurred with 15% whole bunches in a combination of small wooden fermenters and stainless-steel tanks. The wine spent two weeks on skins before being pressed to a 3600-litre seasoned French vat for 11 months’ maturation.

Having spent many years working towards it, Mann was delighted to finally have a large enough crop to conduct what he terms “a proper large-oak fermentation”. Combined with the dense core of flavour from the dry-grown bush vines, this practice highlights the lucidity and freshness that you find in Swinney’s Grenache fruit. Dark-fruited and spicy, with signature sinewy structure, Swinney is setting a new standard for Australian Grenache.

The positive results of Swinney’s meticulous viticulture are, perhaps, felt most strongly in the Mourvèdre. Just a few years ago, Rob Mann was utilising this fruit in Swinney’s Mourvèdre Syrah Grenache bottling. Such was the quality that it became harder and harder to dilute this fruit, and last year the team took the plunge and bottled a straight Mourvèdre. Syrah (6%) and Grenache (4%) make a reappearance in 2022, but it’s very much in a supporting role—this is still the Mourvèdre show.

Swinney’s Mourvèdre is drawn from dry-grown bush vines on the Wilsons Pool vineyard which was planted in the early 2000s and has rich gravel/loam soils. The fruit for the 2022 was hand-picked over two days to optimise flavour and tannin maturity, then berry sorted and transferred to a single stainless-steel fermenter via gravity. A well-judged 20% whole-bunch portion was incorporated to highlight the “distinctive ferrous qualities, fine structure and wild spice” of the variety. This release spent 11 days on skins before being pressed to fine-grained, large-format French oak where it matured for 11 months.

Mann finds a real synergy with Mourvèdre in a cool region and a warm season. Working with the conditions, he picked earlier than the previous year, preserving freshness, vibrancy and mid-weight appeal. According to Mann, Swinney’s Mourvèdre is the wine that best expresses the site’s signature ferrous, rusty nail character; a trait this winemaker values and pursues in all his reds. The fruit shows beautiful white pepper spice, a wild edge, savoury depth and textural richness.

Over the years, Rob Mann has been steadily increasing his use of whole bunch in his red wines. This is especially true for his Syrah. By now you will know that this is a vigneron that seeks freshness, spice and structure in his reds—features he finds heightened in Syrah through careful use of whole bunches.

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. Unlike the Grenache and Mourvèdre, the Syrah is trellised—although there are plans afoot for some single-stake Syrah in the future. 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 as well as preserving freshness, spice and varietal and regional typicity in the fruit.

In the winery, the berries were sorted and emptied into small wooden and stainless-steel fermenters via gravity. A well-integrated 28% whole-bunch component was included to build structure and texture, providing a robust frame for the lustrous Shiraz fruit. The 2022 spent 12 days on skins before being pressed directly to fine-grained, 600-litre demi-muids (7% new) for 11 months.