2025 Frankland Estate Franc, Frankland River

This hits the bullseye, directly between the crunch and crispness of peppery green fruit and the more substantial red-fruited freshness the variety finds when picked on a judicious edge. Great perfume, compact flavours with chiselled texture and a long, spicy finish. A sense that this is thirst-quenching while also doing a pinot-meets-fine-tannin-Italian-grape-variety thing; if you get the drift. The essence is, it feels fancy and yet wildly drinkable and then varietal at the same time. Bravo. Drink to 2030.

95 points & Special Value Mike Bennie for Halliday Wine Companion, October 2026 

Made from the certified organic estate grown fruit, this wine comes from vines planted in 1988. From the warm and dry 2025 season, the fruit was harvested in ideal conditions and fermented in shallow open stainless steel fermenters, hand plunged to gently extract the tannin, keep the ferment as even as possible and maintain fruit purity. The wine was then pressed off and aged for ten months on lees in 500L French oak puncheons and 1500L foudre before the parcels were blended and prepared for bottling.

The wine is vegan friendly.

About this producer

Frankland Estate was founded in 1988 by Barrie Smith and Judi Cullam deep in the Frankland River subregion of Western Australia's Great Southern, about as remote as Australian wine gets.

The second generation now runs the estate: brother and sister Hunter and Elizabeth Smith, with Elizabeth's husband Brian Kent as winemaker since 2010. They were raised on the land and live on it, which shapes everything about how the vineyard is managed and how the wines are made; organic conversion began in 2005, with full certification achieved for the 2009 harvest.

Their Isolation Ridge vineyard is built on ironstone gravel over clay — the family call it coffee rock — fragile, infertile soils that reward with wines that carry a distinctly savoury, ferrous signature alongside generous fruit and natural acidity. The Southern Ocean's influence and cool nights ensure the fruit hangs long into autumn without losing freshness or energy.