Farvie Frankland River Grenache

" Last year, I alerted you to the majesty of the inaugural 2018 vintage of Farvie Grenache and its sibling Syrah. With scores of 19.5/20 and 19/20, respectively, these are two of the finest debut wine labels I have ever tasted. So how did these daring wines fare in the cooler 2019 vintage, and did they suffer from all too familiar ‘second album syndrome’? I am beyond excited to say that this cooler season and the accordingly lower yields have imbued a phenomenal savoury spice character in both of these incredible wines. While they are fractionally less obviously polished than the glossy 2018s, there is a depth of flavour, precision and textural chewiness here, which is extraordinarily compelling. This style of vintage suits Farvie Syrah down to the ground (literally), and so this time it gains a near-perfect 19.5 mark in my notebook, and Farvie Grenache has to make do with a mighty 19! I adore the resonance in these wines with the red, not black, fruit invading their core. In top-flight wines from warmer climes, like South Australia’s Barossa Valley and McLaren Vale, and the Rhône and Languedoc in France, Syrah and Grenache tend to summon up deep black fruit notes only occasionally spiked with regal red fruit tones. Spain has more luck with true red fruit details, especially with bush vine Garnacha. But, Matt Swinney’s epic vineyards in Frankland River coupled with Rob Mann’s celestial winemaking mean these two wines taste densely red and labyrinthinely earthy and therefore like nothing else on earth. Only 176 cases of each were made of these single pick, single block wines, and you simply must have some in your cellar. "