Local winemakers hailed as Young Guns

Mt Barker and Denmark winemakers have been selected to join the Young Gun of Wine top 50 list, which showcases the best young wine labels and winemakers across Australia.

Kim Tyrer from Galafrey, Mt Barker as well as Matt Eastwell and Danni Paviour-Smith from Freehand, Denmark were selected to join the prestigious YGOW list and were also a part of the eight winemakers selected from Western Australia.

Ms Tyrer said she wasn’t confident she could join the YGOW list for the second year in a row, since 60 per cent of her competition were new to the list.

“When I read that, I was like, maybe I wasn’t going to get selected this year,” she said.

“But it’s very humbling that I could join the list again this year.”

Ms Tyrer and Ms Paviour-Smith were also a part of the 15 female winemakers selected to join the top 50 YGOW list.

In the 13th annual edition, the YGOW judging panel tasted more than 250 wines over the course of two days to determine this year’s top 50 winemakers.

Founder Rory Kent said it was getting harder to decide the top 50 winemakers each year because of the increasing quality and calibre of new wine labels in Australia.

“There’s a diversity of people, places and paths to wine, which makes the list so compelling and creatively igniting for the direction of Aussie wine,” he said.