2022 Finalist Archives - Page 2 of 6 - Young Gun of Wine

Erin Frances Pooley

Erin Frances Pooley started making her own wine back in 2012, a semillon from California, no less. That wine was held back three years before release. Erin Frances Pooley began making her own wine in 2012, starting with a Semillon from California. This wine was held back for three years before being released. In 2020, after a decade in the US, Pooley returned home to craft wines from North East Victoria under her Little Frances label, complementing a catalogue of pre-Covid Californian wines. Today, the Little Frances wines are produced in Beechworth, with Pooley’s range focusing on bottlings of Beechworth fruit, alongside selections from further afield. All wines feature a lo-fi lean, yet they showcase a clear expression of variety, vintage, and site.

James Ellis

James Ellis’s Ada Wine Co. is based in the Adelaide Hills, but he sources organically grown fruit from across prime South Australian regions where particular varieties excel: McLaren Vale for grenache, Eden Valley for riesling, and chardonnay and pinot noir from the Hills. His approach is built around a lo-fi approach, with no adds apart from minimal sulphur and no fining or filtration.

James & Kimberly Cooter

James and Kimberly Cooter are both continuing their family traditions of winemaking under their Cooter & Cooter label, as well as for Kimberley’s family winery, The Hedonist. Both labels are built on McLaren Vale classic varieties, with grenache a particular favourite for the pair, while emerging varieties like fiano, tempranillo and sangiovese also appear on the roster. The wines for both labels lean to the midweight, with organic and biodynamic viticulture, earlier picking and a preference for large-format oak creating food-friendly wines to suit the Mediterranean climate.

Kirilly Gordon

Kirilly Gordon’s career has taken her from her Macedon home to wineries around Victoria and to Italy and France. As of 2021, she has looped back home, working at the vineyard the inspired her in the first place, Bindi. That role works in concert with her own label, Bowerbird Wines, specialising in shiraz and viognier, while Patch Wines is her most recent venture, a partnership to make fun, accessible wines that sprang out of the wreckage of Covid.

Luke Tocaciu

Luke Tocaciu has terra rossa soil in his blood, growing up in Coonawarra. His career path was never in doubt, with his winemaking travels leading him back to the family vineyard, Patrick of Coonawarra, a little over a decade ago. Today, while “heritage” styles are still a large part of the business, he is pushing the boundaries with his Méthode range, which celebrates different sides of cabernet sauvignon – including one laced with eucalypt character and another made in a gulpable nouveau style – as well as giving riesling the skins treatment.

Alice Davidson

Alice Davidson launched Aunt Alice from her home in Robe on the Limestone Coast in 2016, but since the 2022 vintage is now focused on Tasmania, making wines in the Huon Valley. What was a means of creative expression outside her more rigid winemaking day jobs has become somewhat more significant, though it will always remain decidedly compact, coupled with a core mission of environmental sustainability and social consciousness. With a focus on pinot noir and chardonnay, Davidson’s wines don’t adhere to any trends, subtly bucking both classic and fashionable norms.

Peta Baverstock

Peta Baverstock’s is a sparkling wine specialist, with her Cuvée-Co Wines label an expression of classic styles, from traditional method vintage sparklings to col fondo prosecco and sparkling shiraz. Based on the Limestone Coast, she sources broadly from the zone, including Mount Gambier, Padthaway and Wrattonbully, working only with small parcels of fruit.

Peta Kotz

Peta Kotz’s Sabi Wabi is her homage to reworking the traditions of the Hunter, of searching for “beauty amongst imperfection”. Semillon is the foundation of the brand she launched in 2019 while working for biodynamic Hunter winery Krinklewood, and she steadfastly says it will remain that way, although her lo-fi making, with no subtractions and no adds, bar a fraction of sulphur, and employment of a raft of alternative vessels is also applied to other whites, red wine and rosé.

Erin Frances Pooley Little Frances