Morrison studied agriculture at the University of Melbourne and spent time on the family farm before landing a vineyard job on the Bellarine in January 2017. From the first day something clicked. “I was in awe of the complexity of growing grapes and wanted to learn it all,” he says. “Pretty soon I began to obsess over the winemaking side. Every lunch we’d come in from the vineyard and I’d corner the winemaker, Darren Burke, armed with the questions I’d penned the night before. I wanted to make sense of this combination of feel and science.” The cellar hand job came up and he took it, completed a Graduate Diploma in Oenology at Charles Sturt University, then started picking leftover grapes from around the posts after the machine harvester had passed to make his own wine after hours. A vintage in California followed. “From my first day of work at a winery in 2018, I was under a bit of a spell,” he says. “I knew instantly that I had to put in the work to get myself into a position to one day do this for myself. It really was that simple.” Wilkie Wines launched in 2021.
“In my early 20s, I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to pursue something in the arts, commerce, or science. Winemaking, especially running your own label, allows you to do all three at the same time, so I never had to choose.”
The education has kept going since. A vintage at Gut Oggau in Austria in 2023 and at Cantina Giardino in southern Italy in 2024 have each left a direct mark on the wines. Gut Oggau’s method of separating a wine into its component fermentation streams – different vessels, different methods – then recombining them to show the full range of what the fruit can become became the conceptual engine behind the Bush Series, the experimental offshoot label Morrison launched in 2023. “Each year, the wines will differ greatly,” he says. “The goal is for the constant development and experiences as a winemaker to be mirrored in the wines.” The Tin Hut pinot gris amber – the first Bush Series release – was directly inspired by that method, splitting and recombining fermentation styles and vessels to capture what he describes as the full expression of the grape. Cantina Giardino, meanwhile, sent him back to Australia with an ambition to push skin contact on white grapes further than he had before.
“The brutal thing about grape growing is that the amount of effort you pour into it doesn’t see an immediate effect. Vines really make you learn patience.”
That ambition produced his most instructive near-miss to date. Inspired by Cantina Giardino’s practice of leaving greco and fiano on skins in sealed amphoras for up to a year, he left his 2025 greco on skins for 330 days – but in stainless steel rather than the porous terracotta the Italians use. “The issue is that the amphorae they use are porous, so they breathe a little, allowing oxygen in to soften the tannins leached from the grapes,” he explains. “There’s no breathing through a stainless steel wall. So when I finally drained the Greco from its skins, it was the most tannic wine I have ever tasted – red or white.” The flavours were remarkable, but the texture was, as he puts it, eye-watering. “I’ve never had such a dry mouth with liquid still in it.” The wine is now ageing, the tannins slowly relaxing. “In time it should be a special wine.” The lesson was hard won and worth it.
In the winery, Morrison always works with wild yeast and bacteria and never filters. “It can make the job a lot harder, especially when the wild microbes don’t want to play ball,” he says, “but when you get it right, it’s well worth it.” He describes the Wilkie Wines style as a “jumbled combination of influences – more conventional winemaking from university study and working at medium-large wineries in Geelong and the USA, mixed with natural winemaking techniques picked up from peers and working at smaller wineries in Italy and Austria. Textured, bright and intriguing – those are the words I look for when I’m making a wine.”
Climate change has pushed him toward Mediterranean whites, and he speaks about them with genuine enthusiasm. “I’d love to make a pinot noir and chardonnay every year, but they can be hard to come by,” he says. “Instead, I’m loving working with the Mediterranean whites at the moment – greco, fiano, falanghina. They hold their acid so well and are so versatile. Fiano is my new chardonnay. It can be picked early for a tart sparkling base, or later for a rich, broad, generous aged white. It can really do it all.” For the warmer-season challenge of building richness without losing acidity, his toolkit has evolved: full malolactic fermentation – a natural process where sharper malic acid converts to softer lactic acid, adding texture and roundness – more lees work, longer ageing in neutral oak, and a touch of deliberate oxygen exposure to bring nuttiness and complexity. For chilled reds, the golden rule is simpler: “They shouldn’t see any time in oak and need a driving acid line and a lick of sweetness. That’s why they’re generally better as blends – taking features from different grapes to make a new wine style.”
He also manages a tiny shiraz block – barely enough to make a barrique worth of wine – which he has been nursing back from conventional farming and some harsh chemicals since 2023 through gentler organic practices and more careful manual canopy management. The progress is slow by nature. “The brutal thing about grape growing is that the amount of effort you pour into it doesn’t see an immediate effect,” he says. “Vines really make you learn patience.” Seeing the once-bare vines with full bunches and tasting the flavour of the season in the wine – that reward, he says, will never get old.
What keeps him going beyond the project itself is the restlessness of the craft. “In my early 20s, I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to pursue something in the arts, commerce, or science,” he says. “Winemaking, especially running your own label, allows you to do all three at the same time, so I never had to choose. The driving force to continue is always to make wine that is better than last year’s. It’s addictive.”
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