2026 Archives - Page 2 of 7 - Young Gun of Wine

Yuri Berns

Yuri Berns is the senior winemaker at Sittella Wines in the Swan Valley – a family estate founded by his parents Simon and Maaike in 1993 – where he has been building a sparkling wine program of genuine ambition alongside a range of still wines sourced from the Swan Valley, Margaret River and Pemberton. The flagship Grand Vintage ‘Marie Christien Lugten’ – a Pemberton pinot noir and chardonnay traditional-method sparkling wine aged for a minimum of 36 months in bottle – has become the label’s prestige statement, while a new estate-planted albariño block in the Swan Valley signals where Berns believes the region’s future lies. A fifth-generation Western Australian with a Champagne obsession and a long-term commitment to soil health and climate adaptation, Berns is quietly making one of the most considered cases for the Swan Valley as a fine wine region.

Jake Sheedy

Jake Sheedy co-founded Sisu in 2021 on a 95-hectare farm in Tasmania’s Coal River Valley, developing a 25-hectare vineyard from bare paddock, building a 400-tonne winery, and opening a cellar door – all within four years and on land that previously ran sheep. The name is Finnish, meaning something like quiet determination and inner grit shaped by nature’s most testing moments. It suits the project. The current range spans pinot noir, chardonnay, riesling, pinot gris, viognier, gewürztraminer, gamay, syrah and nebbiolo – each variety matched to one of three distinct soil types on the estate – with the wines characterised by fruit clarity, restraint and a winemaker whose instinct is to get out of the way when the site is doing its job.

Sam Rush

Sam Rush is a Tasmanian winemaker whose Rush Wines label – launched from the 2021 vintage and made in the Tamar Valley – makes small-batch, site-driven pinot noir, chardonnay and pinot gris from carefully selected vineyards, including a block of pinot noir in Rosevears that Rush leases and farms himself. The approach is wild fermentation, no fining, minimal filtration and a winemaker whose instinct is to let the fruit carry the wine rather than the cellar impose a shape on it. Rush Wines sits in the precise, cool-climate tradition that Tasmania does better than almost anywhere – unpretentious, fruit-forward and built to reflect the island honestly.

Ray Chen

Ray Chen is a New Zealand-trained winemaker whose Victorian label Rongo Wines draws fruit from single vineyards across the state – currently the Strathbogie Ranges and the Yarra Valley – and is built around a single governing idea: wine as part of a food experience, specifically the food Chen grew up eating. The current range spans a skin-contact riesling, a straight riesling, a syrah, a rosé and an aglianico, all unfined and unfiltered, all made with a researcher’s instinct for exploring what different winemaking approaches can reveal from the same source of fruit. The name Rongo refers to the Māori god of cultivated food – an anchor in Chen’s New Zealand heritage and a deliberate statement about where wine belongs: at the table, alongside something worth eating.

Kaden Boekhoorn

Kaden Boekhoorn came to wine through a decade in specialty coffee, drawn by the same fascination with how place and process shape flavour. Passage Wines, launched from the 2024 vintage, is a small Gippsland project focused on distinctive parcels from Baw Baw Shire’s cool volcanic hills – currently a pinot gris and a syrah, both from dry-grown sites where Boekhoorn spent five years learning to farm before making his first commercial wines. The approach is minimal intervention with a strong emphasis on site, patience in the cellar, and wines built for texture and longevity over immediate impact. Passage sits in the thoughtful, grower-producer tradition that Gippsland has quietly built for itself.

Ollie Bevan

Ollie Bevan is a first-generation winegrower making shiraz and grenache from a small organic (not certified) estate in Blewitt Springs, McLaren Vale – one of the subregion’s most compelling pockets for both varieties. Parea, launched from the 2022 vintage, is built around a single dry-farmed shiraz vineyard planted in 1992 and a young block of own-rooted, bush-vine grenache planted from cuttings Bevan took himself from highly regarded local sites. The wines are made with minimal intervention – sulphur the only addition, unfined and unfiltered – and a vineyard-first philosophy that prizes site and seasonal honesty over stylistic consistency. Small, serious, and deeply rooted in place.

Samuel Rumpit

Samuel Rumpit is a Hunter Valley-based winemaker whose Noman label – launched from the 2024 vintage – makes small-batch wines from alternative varieties sourced wherever they’re growing best that year, with no intention of repeating a wine or a region from one vintage to the next. The current range spans a McLaren Vale montepulciano, a Hunter Valley fiano and a tempranillo rosé, all made with Hungarian oak, minimal intervention and a deliberate refusal to take wine too seriously. Noman sits at the approachable, exploratory end of the Australian alternative variety conversation – swimming pool wine, as Rumpit calls it, made for you and your mates.

Meg Wallace

Meg Wallace is a winemaker at Billy Button Wines in Victoria’s Alpine Valleys whose Nacre label – launched from the 2021 vintage – makes a small, intentional range of wines from the region’s Italian varieties, with vermentino and refosco at its current core. Named for mother of pearl, and in tribute to five generations of women in Wallace’s family all sharing the name Margaret, Nacre is a quietly personal project built around the particular parcels and growers she has come to know best. The wines are textural, savoury and handled with a light hand – a label from a region whose Italian variety credentials are still only beginning to be understood.

Yuri Berns Sittella Wines

Yuri Berns

Jake Sheedy

Sam Rush

Ray Chen

Kaden Boekhoorn

Ollie Bevan

Samuel Rumpit

Meg Wallace

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