As with all Swinney’s wines, attention to detail is pivotal to the quality. This dazzling riff on Frankland River Riesling is drawn from hand-selected fruit from two of Swinney’s oldest blocks in the Powderbark vineyard. Here, precise vineyard management—including the uncommon use of shade cloth to protect the grapes from the afternoon sun—is employed along with careful bunch selection to eliminate fruit with excessive sun exposure.
In the cellar, this wine is whole-bunch pressed, only lightly settled and fermented naturally on high solids in tank, where the temperature of the ferments can rise as high as 20 degrees. These techniques are still highly atypical in the world of Australian Riesling. This kind of practice can only work with outstanding fruit, and here it works brilliantly, creating superb texture and discrete complexity.