Gamechanger: Is this rare beast of a WA wine the perfect drop?

It left wine reviewers across the country gobsmacked and the gushing praise that continued on its international release on Wednesday left no doubt this is the most spectacular and important debut ever of a West Australian wine.

On so many levels, the very first vintage of The Farvie Grenache from leading Frankland River producer Swinney Wines is quite simply a gamechanger. Its brother-in-arms, The Farvie Syrah, was unleashed simultaneously with similar traits.

The 2018 wine releases, which retail for $150, have turned the wine world on its head about what's great down under, particularly here in the west.

Surprisingly grenache – a rare beast in WA – can challenge cabernet and chardonnay as the greatest variety in WA and be even more exceptional when given the love to grow on untrellised bush vines and treated with the extreme care a parent might give their newborn.

"This wine has emphatically inserted itself into the conversation around the best grenache wines on the planet," said Nick Ryan from The Australian.

From leading east coast wine scribe Huon Hooke: "Has an elegance and lightness of touch seldom seen in grenache in Australia. A stunning wine."

Over in the west, Ray Jordan scored it 98: "A remarkable wine that captures the essence of this variety in a way not seen before in Australia."

So what makes The Farvie Grenache unique? It's a combination of many elements. The fruit was grown on bush vines, untrellised and free to thrive, a practice rare in WA.

Individual bush vines are selected from within the block – those located on the selected combination of soil type (iron stone gravel) and aspect (hill top facing north east) - and farmed in a very exact and precise way.

The best bunch or two are then chosen from each vine, right there in the vineyard, on three separate occasions, the berries sorted, before being gravity-fed to French oak vats.

This was one of those tastings you will remember for the rest of your life.UK wine critic Matthew Jukes

For the 2018 Farvie Syrah, shade cloth was applied to rows of blocks to protect fruit from heat and sun exposure, maximising purity and freshness and reducing character variability between bunches.

In the final stanza of the masterpiece, the wines were Mann-made. By Rob Mann, that is; a sixth-generation winemaker of the highest order who joined the team in 2018 just before The Farvie wines were made by the Swinney family.

Mann has spent time in other parts of Australia and the world honing his wine skills, including at Cape Mentelle, where he won a Winemaker of the Year gong, and in California's Napa Valley. His own label Corymbia with wife Genevieve draws fruit from family vineyards in the Swan Valley and has also impressed since the first release of wines last year that make a statement with their focus on organic, old-world principles.

His philosophy that great wine is made in the vineyard makes him a perfect match with Swinney, whose wines thrive on meticulous attention to site selection and precise grape growing practices.

"Bush vines are a relative rarity in WA but the approach, which allows vines to grow in a natural and unforced manner, allows the purest expression of terroir to be captured in the wines," Mann said.

"All the hard work is done in the vineyard, and the individual expression of the site and personality of the vintage to shine in each bottle."

The Farvie Grenache was released in Australia in March alongside The Farvie Syrah. After four years in the making, Swinney had to wait six months to show The Farvie wines to the world after the coronavirus pandemic hit in March.

Once the first shipments of wines landed safely in the UK, Mann and Matt Swinney held a Zoom meeting with an influential audience of 25 wine critics, elite restaurateurs and brokers, with leading UK writer Matthew Jukes guiding the group through the one-hour tasting and discussion.

"This was one of those tastings you will remember for the rest of your life," Jukes said from London on Thursday. "We talked about two wines for an hour and could've kept going.

"Nobody launches two debut wines like that ... the uniqueness of them I have never seen in my 34 years in the wine business. They are so daring."

Britian's top wine critic Jancis Robinson, who provides advice for the wine cellar of Queen Elizabeth II, wasn't at the tasting but has rated the 2018 Farvie Grenache an 18/20, commenting it was "unlike any other grenache I have come across". Perhaps Her Majesty will request a few cases after the 2019 iteration is released next March, pandemic permitting.

Jukes himself rated it a whopping 19.5, a score off the charts while another prominent wine critic, Joe Fattorini, tweeted his unequivocal approval from Wednesday's tasting to 20,000 followers.

The team at Swinney - Mann, long-term viticulturist Lee Haselgrove, Matt and sister Janelle Swinney - are intent on making the hand of the winemaker as discreet as possible, instead focusing on the details: berry sorting, gravity, natural fermentation in oak, a percentage of whole bunch, co-fermentation, ageing in seasoned large format oak, minimal fining, and filtration.

They have the entire portfolio of Swinney wines singing, the estate-range riesling, syrah, grenache and MSG (mourvedre/syrah/grenache) all a steal at the $30-40 range and exemplifying the elegance, structure and sophistication of The Farvie range.

On a legacy scale, the newborn Swinney Farvie twins may one day join the ranks of recent icon-range cabernet debuts from Margaret River pioneers Vasse Felix, Cullen, Voyager and bold newcomer Cloudburst in being WA's most important, treasured and very greatest wines.