Skigh McManus was an early bloomer in terms of his wine career, landing his first proper wine job – a vintage placement at Howard Park – directly after graduating from high school. A job offer at Cape Mentelle followed, and McManus moved to the Margaret River region, where he has been based ever since. From here, McManus has ventured forth for international vintages in both well-known regions (Napa Valley, California; Marlborough, New Zealand; the Loire, France) and off-the-beaten-path destinations (Niagara, Canada; Malaysia). In 2010, McManus set out on his own as a self-employed winemaker, producing wines under contract for Kerfuffle, Tomasi, Oceans Estate, and Modern Wines, amongst others, as well as founding (and then selling) the Flor Marché label. Skigh Wine emerged as an extension of this work in 2016, and has since become McManus’s focus, with a Yallingup Siding cellar door opening in 2020 and a Cowaramup wine bar, Strange Brew, opening in 2025.
Skigh Wines separates McManus’s winemaking output into three streams. The top-line wines, simply labelled ‘Skigh’, are consciously modelled on old-world exemplars with, in McManus’s words, “a Margaret River twist”; the Coda range is a more fruit-forward and vibrant, fermented and raised in stainless steel; and the Strange Brew range focuses on pushing boundaries via minimal-intervention winemaking techniques and unusual mixtures of varieties (cabernet sauvignon blended with zinfandel, for example). “It sounds basic, but the wines I enjoy drinking directly influence the wines that I like to craft,” McManus says. “Low intervention, fruit expressive and regionally distinct are the key features for these wines – with a tendency to explore the softer, more approachable ‘drink now’ examples.”
“The tipping point on launching the Skigh Wine brand came from a point of having the complete freedom to craft wines that respected the fruit’s journey to bottle,” McManus adds. “So many times wine production is forced into a remedial winemaking position with chemical alterations.” A desire to get away from commercial wine manipulations pushed McManus into developing his own label. “We have been able to craft wines with a lot less intervention and I think that consumers can see the honesty in these wines,” he says.
“Minimal intervention wines actually take a fair bit of babysitting to get to bottle fault-free.”
As befits a minimal intervention winemaker, McManus says his goal is to “try not to add or remove from what the fruit has given us to work with.” In practice, this means very little in the way of additives across the entire range, with free sulphur levels kept under 40 parts per million at the time of bottling. Fermentations are gentle and spontaneous. Many wines are unfiltered, and those that are filtered are only coarsely filtered. “Minimal intervention wines actually take a fair bit of babysitting to get to bottle fault-free,” McManus says. “When the envelope is pushed with this type of wine, things can often teeter over the edge of being commercially sound – sometimes even after the bottling has occurred. And yes, I have had to discard a few trial batches over the years.” His golden rule is to “simply respect the fruit above all else.”
Working to make fresher, more vibrant wines free of winemaker artifice gives Skigh Wine “I think the timing of wine style changes for our consumers away from the larger-bodied to lighter, ‘drink now’ style wines been significant and has lined up perfectly with the challenges of climate change, driving us to harvest earlier than normal,” he says. “Chasing balance at harvest has prompted the earlier harvest dates on most varieties within the range, and is a direct influence of climate change.” He adds: “I think the biggest challenge is to maintain cropping levels at a tonnes per hectare rate that is viable for the vineyard operations, yet not lowering quality of fruit, as well as allowing us to harvest at acceptable acidity and sugar levels for the styles of wines we aspire to release.”
For McManus, sustainability needs to be viewed holistically. “I just want to see the industry as a whole focus on increasing the focus on wine quality in a sustainable and commercially viable manner,” he says. “To be able to truly work within those parameters at a smaller production level – 80 tonne fruit intake – will allow us to scale up with confidence in the future viability of the business.” And for the future? “I think looking forward we will have further refined our core ranges within the brand, with a tendency towards higher percentage of newer oak in the Skigh tier and an expansion of uncommon blends and alternate varietals in the Strange Brew range,” McManus says. “I’d love to be able to expand our use of Amphora as well.”
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