2025 Archives - Young Gun of Wine

William Rikard-Bell

Rikard Wines is a story of recovery and remarkable resilience. In 2008 winemaker William Rikard-Bell was caught in an explosion in the winery he worked at in the Hunter Valley, suffering third-degree burns to over 70% of his body. Recovery from these life-threatening injuries sharpened Rikard-Bell’s focus, prompting a move to the cooler climate of Orange and the founding of his own winemaking business. His Rikard label offers a classically styled range of wines from cool-climate stalwart varieties – pinot noir, chardonnay, riesling – alongside sparkling wines, a shiraz, and a cabernet franc/merlot/malbec blend. With the refreshing elevation of Mount Canobolas as his muse and ally, Rikard-Bell’s wines are helping to define what this emerging region can offer.

Valentina Moresco

What happens when you take a talented young winemaker from Piedmont, Italy’s premier wine destination, then train them in the scientific, precision-oriented ways of New Zealand, before landing them in the uniquely challenging subtropical environment of the Hunter Valley? You might end up with a figure like Valentina Moresco, whose journey from Montà to Krinklewood Estate has given her a love of both traditional winemaking and technical virtuosity that perfectly suits the unique demands of the Hunter’s climate. Taking over the reins at Krinklewood since vintage 2017, she crafts a suite of classic Hunter wines – semillon, chardonnay, shiraz, and verdelho – alongside more adventurous drops such as skin-contact gewürztraminer, lightly pétillant off-dry rosé, and traditional and Charmat-method sparkling wines. Reverential towards the Hunter’s storied past, but with an eye firmly on the future of the region, Moresco makes wines that have a lot to say about the present moment.

Tom Bradshaw

Everyone loves a wine story. Wine marketers are always looking for the narrative hook that can convince the average punter to pick up a bottle and take it home, or to order a glass at a bar – whether that’s a story of new and interesting varieties, sustainable viticulture, renegade winemaking, or triumph over adversity. But stories don’t actually make wine – people do. Tom Bradshaw doesn’t provide a narrative hook for his wine – his winemaking philosophy is straightforward and no-nonsense, he uses mainstream grape varieties, and operates out of a region (Margaret River) best known for its even-keeled climate and consistently high quality. With a tight lineup of high-quality, classically styled wines – a cabernet sauvignon, a chardonnay, a syrah-based blend and a sangiovese-based rosé – Thomas William Wines isn’t out to reinvent the wheel.

Thomas New

Many of us dream of working for ourselves, but not everyone has the courage to pursue the dream – and fewer still do so with a goodly dose of introspection and humility. This is the path that Thomas New has taken on his journey to founding Future Perfect – his label dedicated to lo-fi, cool climate winemaking, circling around chardonnay and pinot noir. With no formal training as a winemaker – but plenty of experience from his former label La Petite Mort and subsequent vintages across Australia and around the world – New crafts wines that bottle the cool-climate freshness of his Tasmanian terroir.

Skigh McManus

Skigh McManus’s eponymous label, Skigh Wine, comes from a simple premise – make wine you’d like to drink. For this Margaret River stalwart, that means vibrant, deft wines with good fruit and balanced acidity, made with a minimum of intervention in the cellar. McManus a broad array of wines across three product lines – the old-world inspired Skigh range, the fresh and fruit-forward Coda range, and the more experimental and lo-fi Strange Brew range – from Margaret River, Great Southern, and Geographe fruit, with the aim of bringing people together.

Sierra Blair

There’s an old saying: “Good wine is made in the vineyard.” Winemaker Sierra Blair adds a self-deprecating coda: “ … and fucked up in the winery.” Having grown up in a family of California grape growers before studying viticulture and oenology at UC Davis, Blair has an intimate understanding of the relationship between what happens in the vineyard and what happens in the cellar. After graduating, she worked vintages in various regions of California, France, New Zealand and Australia, before falling in love with Tasmania. She has worked as a winemaker at Ghost Rock on the Cradle Coast since 2019, crafting their extensive range of estate wines – pinots noir, meunier, and gris, chardonnay, and sauvignon blanc, as well as single-site expressions of many of the above, rosé, and traditional method sparkling wines – alongside Ghost Rock’s more experimental Supernatural range, plus a small side project of her own in Zymo Wines. With her eye on both sides of the growing/making coin, Blair’s wines balance winemaker know-how with a deep respect for the work that goes into the fruit she uses.

Scott McGarry

In ancient Rome, the phrase Nil caput quoerere – ‘to search for the source of the Nile’ – was used as an idiom to describe attempting the impossible. While Scott McGarry’s wines under the Source of the Nile label don’t strictly speaking attempt the impossible, there is definitely a hint of the Quixotic about this project, which sees McGarry commute from his home in northern New South Wales to the Barossa Valley every year for vintage, where he makes wine from fruit sourced from all over Australia. Over two releases, each consisting of a minuscule three cuvées, McGarry has established himself as one of Australia’s most interesting natural/lo-fi winemakers. Largely self-taught – with some help along the way from Jilly Wines’ Jared Dixon – McGarry’s wines speak of the wild magic that can happen when quality fruit meets an untamed and somewhat untrained maker.

Rojer Rathod & Millie Shorter

What happens when you take two experienced hospitality professionals with no formal winemaking training, get them to fall in love with both winemaking and Sicilian grape varieties, and let them ferment wine in traditional Indian clay vessels? You might end up with something like Majama Wines, an exciting new Hunter Valley-based project by Rojer Rathod and Millie Shorter, whose second vintage release – a tight lineup of zibbibo, inzolia, and nero d’avola – has already turned heads in the wine trade. With a minimal-intervention philosophy in the cellar that’s been dialled in with a clear focus on Sicilian varieties and fermentation in clay, as well as some of the most striking packaging currently on shelves, Rathod and Shorter are setting themselves up to become a striking new voice in the Australian wine landscape.

William Rikard-Bell Rikard Wines