2025 Saignee Pinot Noir Rose

Saignee, technically meaning “to bleed game meat or poultry”, refers to the way we ‘bleed’ juice for this wine. We allow the Farr Rising pinot noir fruit to sit in tank for two to three hours before bleeding free-run juice at a suitable colour for rosé production. This process concentrates the pinot ferment, but we also produce a barrel-fermented rosé. Natural barrel fermentation at cool temperatures is followed by full malolacitc fermentation. The wine is then placed in four- and five-year-old barrels for 10 months before being filtered and bottled.

We like to produce a very dry style of rosé, but with flavour and varietal sweetness. It has a salmon-pink hue, is perfumed with fruit and a lovely savoury, earthy palate, and has a long, dry structured finish. This is the perfect wine to have with food.

The Winefront review by Gary Walsh

Published on 12 January 2026

'My partner picked up a bottle of this at Parade Cellars in Adelaide. I’ve not tried a Farr Rising saignée before.

Cherry, strawberry, almond, roses and hibiscus, a little spice and orange peel, and a slight lift. It’s juicy and red fruited, maybe something of a peach tea thing here, an almond creaminess to it, a light blood orange tang, fine powdery texture, with a savoury yet fleshy finish of excellent length. It’s a bolder style in a way, but has complexity and character to burn. Delightful. A rosé made with intent. A toss up between 94 and 95 points.'

95 Points

2025 Gamay

The gamay was grafted onto own rooted cabernet vines, which were planted in 1999. The soil is black cracking clay soil, with a mixture of submerged volcanic pebbles and boulders at one end, and a more friable and slightly more vigorous chocolate-coloured soil at the other. The first fruit was picked during the 2014 vintage.

The grapes are hand-picked and sorted in the vineyard, then placed in the tank as whole bunches. The tank is sealed and left for 10 days to ferment naturally and release carbonic fruit aromas. The fruit is foot stomped, pressed on days 11 and 12, and then placed in five-year-old barrels to finish the fermentation process. The wine is bottled eight months later.

The nose of the gamay, so far, is fruitful at first before opening up to reveal berry flavours with earthy and gamey notes. The palate is full of red berry fruits with savoury undertones. The structure is long, earthy and lingering. With vibrant acidy and defined tannins, this wine is full of flavour.

2025 Pinot Noir

The Farr Rising pinot vineyard was planted in 2001 using a large mixture of rootstocks, but only three clones—MV6, 114 and 115. It is a very exposed and hungry north-facing slope, consisting of grey sandy loam mixed with an ironstone pebble (buckshot) at the top. This leads into black volcanic soil over limestone at the bottom of the vineyard.

The fruit is hand harvested, and then sorted in the vineyard. The fruit is fermented in an open-top fermenter, and an average 60 to 70 per cent of it is destemmed. The wine is placed in 20 to 30 per cent new Allier barrels by gravity. It is racked by gas after secondary fermentation, then again at 18 months to be bottled. Over time, the site has shown that it can certainly stand up to its bigger brothers.

The wine typically shows a soft perfumed nose, which begins to build. The palate has sweetness, followed by mineral overtones enhanced by toasty oak, and firm flavours with a long and savoury finish. This is a gem of a wine, with ageing potential of five to eight years from most vintages.

(Nick Farr - Farr Rising | www.byfarr.com.au)