2023 Finalist Archives - Page 3 of 7 - Young Gun of Wine

Emily Kinsman

Emily Kinsman’s ECK Wines is based out of her small vineyard and winery in central Heathcote, where she organically farms less than half a hectare of shiraz. That modest holding is supported by fruit – shiraz, chardonnay, pinot noir, marsanne, cabernet and riesling – sourced from across Heathcote and Mount Alexander, in the Bendigo region, with a greenfield site in Macedon recently purchased, which will soon be planted to vines. Originally a lawyer by trade, the pull of making something with her hands and a simpler, more connected life captivated Kinsman, and her wines follow that attraction, with a traditional approach, incorporating old, larger format oak and amphora, along with low sulphur additions and no fining or filtration.

Doug Lilburne

Doug Lilburne’s journey into wine started in kitchens in New York as a teenager, progressing through culinary school then to setting up a farm-to-table food program at a winery in Northern California. Winery work eventually drew him away from the stove, and vintages around the world followed. Now settled into his leased winery and vineyard in the Yarra Valley’s Steels Creek, Lilburne’s Mise en Place label focuses on home fruit and organic vineyards in the Pyrenees and Great Western to currently make a syrah, syrah and touriga nacional blend, and a syrah rosé. The winemaking is manual and traditional, with only sulphur added, and not always. The first release was in 2022 with wines from the 2021 vintage.

Dale Wheeler

Dale Wheeler left a more certain career path in advertising to go all in with winemaking, moving to Melbourne and enrolling in a winemaking course. That spirit of adventure led him to take on a vineyard lease with a friend while they were both still studying. That was no easy path, but it gave him a firm appreciation of ground-up winemaking and a deep connection to the nuances of the Yarra Valley as well as connections to its best growers. Today, Wheeler Wines focuses on the great Yarra standards of chardonnay, pinot noir and cabernet, along with a very de rigueur chillable red, while the 3P25 label sees a portion of the profits donated to a children’s medical charity. Whole bunch for reds, barrel ferments, and no additions apart from sulphur are the general rules, with variety, site and season given primacy.

Chrissie Smith

Chrissie Smith’s Intrepidus Wines was only born in the 2021 vintage, working from a one-acre vineyard in the Canberra District that she farms herself. And that’s critical for her philosophy, with an abrupt career shift leading her to wine and quickly to a vineyard-first approach, recognising that the work done amongst the vines was just as important, if not more so, than the work in the winery. The label is currently built around sangiovese and shiraz, with tiny amounts of external grapes to allow for experimentation. Blends of the two home grapes make up a rosé and light red, while shiraz is also co-fermented with a splash of viognier, marsanne and roussanne.

Chris Strickland

Foxeys Hangout was founded by brothers Tony and Michael Lee in the Mornington Peninsula subregion of Red Hill. They work from their organic and biodynamic vineyard and winery to produce mainly chardonnay and pinot noir, along with pinot gris and shiraz. Chris Strickland has risen over the last decade and a half from a casual worker in the cellar door to now oversee both the viticulture and winemaking. His approach is a vineyard first one, leaning on a family history of horticulture and a whole raft of experimentation to make wines from the ground up, with principles of sustainability underpinning all aspects.

Chris Ryan

Chris Ryan’s Honky Chateau is somewhat of a COVID baby, a natural extension of his casual vintage work in wineries, but one sped up by the closures of Melbourne’ restaurants in 2020 and ’21. Working as a head sommelier in Andrew McConnell’s Trader House group, Ryan was well-acquainted with the great wines of the world, but his ambitions for his own label, centred around Yarra Valley shiraz and cabernet sauvignon, were somewhat humbler: “My goal is to make wine that gives pleasure to common people. I think expectations are the enemy of wines, so I hope that people can grab a bottle mid-week, pull a cork, share it with friends, alongside food and be pleasantly surprised. Someone else can be a disrupter and trend maker.” Today, he balances his winemaking with his senior buying role.

Charlie Mann

Charlie Mann traded in the recording studio for winemaking after a chance meeting with Owen Latta. An epiphany with one of Latta’s wines saw him ditch his long commute to take up work at Eastern Peake, where he still works. The Charles Oliver label was born in Mann’s second vintage, with 2023 being the fourth for the label. The offering is compact, focused on organic vineyards and earlier picking. Reds and whites both clock in at lower alcohols, with texture and fragrance uncluttered by oak, and are bottled with no fining or filtration and only a small dose of sulphur. The 2022 release saw two grenache cuvées and a syrah grenache blend, all from the Pyrenees.

Keira O’Brien

Keira O’Brien started Rivulet Wines in part to attempt to save Tasmania’s oldest commercial riesling planting and in part to express her sense of creativity, which was being stifled in her contract-winemaking day job. Over the vintages released, the portfolio has ebbed and flowed, with availability of the right fruit a key driver in her range. In 2022, she became the winemaker at the iconic east coast vineyard Freycinet, juggling her brand and one of Tasmania’s most vaunted. The Rivulet range consists of cross-regional pinot noir and a pair of single site offerings, with a single site chardonnay, barrel-fermented sauvignon blanc and a sylvaner filling the roster of wines, though a riesling will come back into the range from the 2023 vintage.

Emily Kinsman ECK Wines

Emily Kinsman

Doug Lilburne

Dale Wheeler

Chrissie Smith

Chris Strickland

Chris Ryan

Charlie Mann

Keira O’Brien

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