96 points - "The fruit here hails from both their Powderbark and Wilson’s Pool Vineyards and is a mix of clones and massale selection. 28% whole bunches, wild yeasts and eleven months in larger format French oak, 8% of which is new. The colour is a gleaming purple. The nose exhibits notes of leather, spices, herbs, cloves, aniseed, tapenade, mulberries and cranberries. Gorgeous texture which gives the wine the impression that one is drinking silk. There are the finest satiny tannins, and lots of them. Excellent balance, incredible length and impressive persistence, all combine to make this an absolutely superb Frankland River Syrah. Enjoy over the next 12 years." - Ken Gargett (Wine Pilot)

95 points - "The colour is striking—deep red and almost opaque in parts. This wine comes from the Wilson's Pool and Powderbark Vineyards from vertically trellised syrah vines. The combination of Massale selection syrah and the more recently added clones 470 and 171 has introduced new characters and complexity to what was already an impressive wine. Whole bunches and wild fermentation bring texture and structure, complemented by spice that sits comfortably with the plush, darker fruit. The oak–fruit balance is superb, with fine-grained large-format French oak (just 8% new) and time on yeast lees completing the wine in a polished way." - Ray Jordan (Ray Jordan)

95 points - "Twelve days on skins, a touch of new oak (8%), wild fermented; just under a third is whole bunches. This is a sinewy, taut, textural, medium-weight red wine laden with green herbs and spice, chewy cranberry, dark cherry, mulberry and a good shake of clove spice. A bit of ginger biscuit, some cinnamon bark notes, a curious quinine element, too; pleasingly bitter and spicy, again. Tannins find an emery board texture, a good chomp and chew, and stretch the wine long. This feels very 'syrah' all up. It's beautifully composed, albeit a touch on edge in youth, but it will settle wonderfully." - Mike Bennie (Halliday Wine Companion)

95 points - "The 2024 Syrah has a perfume like pressed flowers and crushed rocks, but it's black and intense, with flavors of graphite and black pepper, roasted meat crust, beetroot and ironstone. The fruit on the palate has blackberry and mulberry, sweet licorice and blood plum. A beautiful wine here, it feels impervious to the heat of the season. 14% alcohol, sealed under screw cap." - Erin Larkin (The Wine Advocate)

94 points - "This is meaty, peppery, blackcurrant and blackberry, quite some exotic spice, fennel salami, liquorice, black olives. It’s medium-bodied, all salumi and pepper, black olive, a nutty hazelnut skin feel to tannin, a sappy umami thing and blood orange tang to acidity, sooty and nutty and spicy to close. Something of a violet and gum leaf perfume too. Good wine. Kind of salty, but very nice." - Gary Walsh (The Wine Front)

Vineyard Notes:

The fruit was from dry-grown, vertically-trellised Syrah with small parcels of fruit hand picked from specific sites on our Swinney Wilson’s Pool & Powderbark vineyards. The incorporation of mature Massale Selection Syrah blocks and newer 470 and 171 clonal material, with their different growth habits and bunch structures, along with the use of shadecloth on the afternoon sun side of the vines, helped build layers and structural complexity in the finished wine.

Production Notes:

The fruit was hand picked, berry sorted, and emptied to small oak and stainless steel fermenters via gravity. We incorporated 28% whole bunches and wild fermentation to build structure and texture and provide the framework on which to express the opulence and spice of Syrah. The wine spent 12 days on skins prior to being pressed directly to finegrained, large-format, French oak (8% new), and was aged on lees for 11 months prior to bottling. The wine was made with minimum effective Sulphites, is unfined and minimally filtered.

Other Notes:

100% Syrah