Swinney Mourvèdre 2023

This is the third straight Mourvèdre bottling, and wine is basking in the spotlight. Swinney’s Mourvèdre is drawn from dry-grown bush vines on Wilsons Pool Vineyard, planted in the early 2000s on rich gravelly-loam soils. The fruit was picked by hand when flavour and tannin were perfectly ripe, then sorted berry by berry and transferred via gravity to a single stainless-steel fermenter. Bunches were bumped up a touch this year—a well-judged 30% highlighting the variety’s “distinctive ferrous qualities, fine structure and wild spice”. It spent 11 days on skins before being pressed to fine-grained large-format French oak, where it matured for 11 months.Mann says Swinney’s Mourvèdre is the wine that most clearly expresses the site’s signature ferrous, rusty nail character. Violet, lavender, and blue/blackberries provide the lift, with salumi, pepper, and gravel tugging below. The palate is plush and bright, with a line of sweet, pure fruit and powdery tannins puffing out across the back and extending the graphite and iron mineral notes wide and long.