NSW/ACT Archives - Young Gun of Wine

2023 The Vinden Headcase Chenin Blanc

This chenin blanc from the Hunter valley not only challenges preconceptions about what the Hunter can achieve – it also shows a new facet of chenin blanc as an endlessly fascinating variety.

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.

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.

Peter Valeri

New South Wales’s Riverina region cops a bit of a bad rap from wine lovers. The second-largest wine region in Australia in terms of volume, its 17,000 hectares under vine pump out 15% of the country’s wine grapes every year, nearly all of which get turned into mass-market wines such as the infamous Yellow Tail. With the exception of a handful of quality-minded producers such as R. Paulazzo, and some innovative projects from larger-scale growers like Calabria Family Wines (who are experimenting with Mediterranean varieties better suited to the region’s climate) and De Bortoli (whose famous Noble One botrytis wine comes from Riverina fruit), the region is generally seen as a wasteland in terms of fine wine. It’s a perception that Peter Valeri’s Via Pola project is trying its utmost to rewrite. With just two wines under its belt – a fiano and a montepulciano, both of which made their debut in vintage 2024 – it has already established itself as one of the most exciting new projects from the region in decades.

James Turpie

While Australia has a long and storied history of wine growing, it’s fair to say that New Zealand doesn’t. With a few notable exceptions – such as James Busby’s vineyards in Waitangi, or the vineyards planted in Hawkes Bay in the mid 19th century by Marist missionaries for communion wine – the New Zealand wine story starts in the 1970s, and only really gets going in the 1980s, after the country got over its ill-advised love affair with the müller-thurgau variety. You’d therefore have to have some stones to start an Australian wine label that is explicitly modelled after the wines of Central Otago in New Zealand – especially if you were to start the label in Australia’s oldest wine region, the Hunter Valley. And yet this is exactly what James Turpie has done with his label, James Edward Wines – which offers a tight range of chardonnay, pinot noir, chenin blanc, gewürztraminer, and shiraz – and its wild-child sibling label, Maison de Turps, where Turpie’s more unconventional experiments in winemaking can blossom.

Jacob Stein

Jacob Stein brings a fresh energy to Mudgee, one of Australia’s oldest wine regions. A third generation winemaker, Jacob has stepped up to take on the mantle of his family’s winery, as well as developing a secondary label, Blü Hen, for his more adventurous offerings. Crafting a wide range of wines, from the classic – several wines based on riesling, semillon, sauvignon blanc, chardonnay, shiraz, cabernet sauvignon and merlot, including sparkling and fortified variations under the Robert Stein label – to the more adventurous – a chillable barbera, a savoury montepulciano, a textural riesling and a rosé made from sangiovese under the Blü Hen label – Stein is a renaissance man of the Mudgee.

Andrew Duff

Can you teach an old dog new tricks? If Andrew Duff’s wines are anything to go by, you certainly can. Duff brings all of the operational nous he’s garnered over a lengthy career in large-volume corporate winemaking to bear on the wines he crafts for two labels – reinvigorated Hunter Valley stars Briar Ridge, and his own Duff Wines – while shaking off the corporate strictures and profit-loss calculations. With a palate freshly honed by the infamous Len Evans Tutorial and a winemaking vision sharpened by the Wine Australia Future Leaders program, Duff is ready to flex his muscles and write the second act of his winemaking story.

2023 The Vinden Headcase Chenin Blanc Hunter Valley
This chenin blanc from the Hunter valley not only challenges preconceptions about what the Hunter can achieve – it also shows a new facet of chenin blanc as an endlessly fascinating variety.