Top 100 Wines 2024: Taster's pick

We've revealed the Halliday Top 100 Wines 2024 as selected by the Tasting Team. The 100 wines are split into six categories: Australian sparkling, white wines under $40, white wines over $40, red wines under $50, red wines over $50 and, for the first time, the taster's pick.

The Halliday taster's pick is awarded to a wine by a member of the Halliday Tasting Team. These wines are the personal highlight of all the wines the tasters have reviewed across the last 12 months. The taster's pick is a mark of excellence and only one nomination per Halliday Tasting Team member is permitted.

Below, the Tasting Team tell us the stories behind their highlight wine.

Toni Paterson MW

Skilfully traversing tradition and modernity, today’s Hunter Valley winemakers craft wines that respect tradition, while appealing to the sophisticated palate where vibrancy and freshness are key, and fruit is at the fore. One of the leading players in the region is Silkman Wines, a micro-brand that combines fruit from the region’s best vineyards with expert winemaking to create a mesmerising range of wines. They have set a new narrative for the valley and are part of a broader wave of winemakers who are redefining the style of Hunter Valley wine.

Across the range, the Silkman wines are stunning, from the complex, ageworthy chardonnays and classic semillons to the medium weight shiraz. Among its standout labels is the 2022 Silkman Wines Reserve Shiraz Pinot Noir ($60). It is a fragrant, expertly made, medium-weight red that slips into any setting with ease. Supple, fragrant, long, and flavoursome, it's a contemporary interpretation of this historical Hunter blend – crafted by the winemaking duo Shaun and Liz Silkman. Liz was named the 2025 Halliday Winemaker of the Year.

Shanteh Wale

2022 Byrne Farm Shiraz Pinot Noir, Orange

Established in 2020, Jeff Byrne has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to creating and shaping an estate defined by quality, discernment, and wines of genuine complexity. The Pinot Noir may reign with cool-climate grace, but it’s the Shiraz – rooted in slightly lower-altitude sites – that also hums with potential.

The 2022 Byrne Farm Shiraz Pinot Noir is a lyrical take on a classic Australian duet, capturing the region’s creative spark. Priced under $50, it’s a wine – like the Byrne family itself – that opens its arms to a wide audience.

It answers the call for wines of brightness and lively detail – medium-bodied, vivid, and in tune with our shifting seasons and tables full of fresh, local fare. It’s a bottle for golden-hour picnics, wood-fired crusts, and clinking glasses in buzzing wine bars. An exultant sip in every pour.

Philip Rich

2023 Mount Mary Triolet, Yarra Valley

There are certain wines, that for me, are individual classics with few peers. Yarra Yering’s Dry Red No. 3 and Sorrenberg Sauvignon Blanc Semillon are two that come to mind – blended wines where the whole is always greater than the sum of its parts. Like these two wines, Mount Mary’s Triolet has been, for as long as I can remember, one of my favourite Australian wines.
 
The basic facts are that this Graves- (Bordeaux) inspired blend of sauvignon blanc / semillon and muscadelle was first made by the late and great Dr. John Middleton in 1997. The 2023 is a blend of 65/25/10% sauvignon blanc/semillon/muscadelle. The varieties are picked and fermented separately with some whole bunches in the press. Crushed and destemmed with 20% whole bunches in the press. It’s then barrel fermented and matured for 11 months in seasoned barriques. The result is a wine that’s always complex with intense lemony aromas together with quince and oyster shell scents.
 
The palate has richness, but it’s never heavy. There’s always a real sense of harmony on the saline, structured and very long palate as well. I

Ideal food pairing for this wine

I put it the 2023 through its paces recently with a simple prawn and pea risotto and some Comte to finish but this would work equally well with scallops and other crustacea not to mention roast chicken or a mushroom risotto topped with some freshly grated Reggiano. To quote my review of the 2023, “If you have never tasted this wine, you are missing out on what I have long regarded as one of the Yarra Valley's, and indeed Australia's, finest white wines.”

Mike Bennie

It's one of those wines that demands the status of 'unicorn' so infrequently seen in the wild. But for those who have an allocation, stumble onto a wine list with it on offer, or enjoy the largesse of friends with good cellars, this is at the pinnacle of elegance and concentration, with a succulent and svelte tannin profile and general sense of inimitable detail of dark fruit, sooty spice savouriness and that 'Aussie bush character' that defines Wendouree wines. There’s a kaleidoscope of fruit and herbal descriptors in berries, plums, cherry, sage leaf, eucalyptus, sandalwood and clove set amongst the pulverised rock minerality so keenly associated with Wendouree’s best releases.

While it is a wine for impossibly long spells in dark, cool cellars, this release is simply sublime and a wine I felt glad to drink in its vigorous youth. That being said, if patience and longevity are on your side, you could be drinking this with glee over 30-or-more years. Such is the way of the great Wendouree wines.

Marcus Ellis

2023 Bekkers Single Vineyard Selection Clarendon Syrah, McLaren Vale

I have said on many occasions, and sometimes quite emphatically, even loudly, that grenache, and McLaren Vale grenache in particular, is the most exciting category in Australian wine right now. And while I firmly stand by that, Steve Pannell’s 2021 shiraz trio from Koomilya shows just how thrilling Vale shiraz can be. It’s a vineyard where Steve sourced fruit from for his first Jimmy Watson win, and it’s the one site that he kept going back to. Farmed with care and made with a light hand, it’s a place he thought could imprint itself on a wine like few others.

Steve and Fiona have owned Koomilya since 2012, and it has been farmed organically (not certified) and regeneratively from day one. The block wines are only released in top years, and it’s no secret that 2021 was a great season. Each wine is distinctly nuanced by the characteristics of each block, rather than the elaboration, and inseparable in terms of quality. For its lucidity of site expression, depth, effortless power and drive of supreme tannin, the JC Block leads the way for me. It is a thrilling wine with a pre-technology feel but a modern eye to purity. It will cellar superbly.

Jeni Port

NV Chambers Rosewood Old Vine Muscadelle

Each year, it’s an absolute bliss to taste fortifieds, but beyond the grand and the rare classification levels, there is one level that shows the mastery, the freshness, the joy, the complexity, the utter deliciousness of it all at a price we can all afford.

Stephen Chambers, sixth generation winemaker at Chambers Rosewood is a master fortified maker and his Old Vine Muscadelle is something to behold. It also goes above and beyond the 6-10 years average age for classic level fortifieds.

Base wines were laid down in 1986 and they contribute an aged warmth complemented with fresher, younger material. This is the fortified I drink and recommend drinkers – new to fortifieds or not – to enjoy. It is ridiculously priced – don’t tell Stephen – and it offers so much in beauty, style and history.

Jane Faulkner

2023 tripe.Iscariot Kroos Chenin Blanc, Margaret River

While the reds are exceptional, chardonnay too, this year, Kroos chenin blanc 2023 stole my heart. It took out Other Whites & Blends of the Year in the 2026 Halliday Wine Companion, and deservedly so. The fruit comes off a site in Wilyabrup planted in 1985 and transformed into one of Australia’s finest drinks.

Alas, this is Remi’s last Kroos, last wine, as he is winding up his business. My heart cracked at the news. He says the decision was hard but ultimately the right one: a young family, full-time work and more meant something had to give.

 Adieu tripe.Iscariot thanks for the years of pleasurable drinking. If you order the last Kroos (I bought several dozen!), enjoy the moment. No occasion necessary – it’s all about what’s in the glass. ”

Dave Brookes

Fraser and Andrea McKinley's Sami-Odi wines are in the groove, none more so than the 2022 Hoffmann Dallwitz, a cask selection of cask selection from some of the oldest vines off Adrian Hoffmann's renowned Ebenezer vineyard in the Northern Barossa. Fraser's obsessive attention to detail – with everything from vineyard management, picking decisions, cellar work and blending – manifests in the glass through stunning fruit expression, density and harmony, leaving those lucky enough to imbibe a glass with the purest impression of soil to glass transparency available.

This attention to detail carries though to the packaging that features label artwork crafted by the McKinley clan; often a bricolage of objects collected on their travels, each year different and etched with memories and meaning, much like the wine itself, perfectly capturing the nuance of a particular site, from a particular year with a minimum of artefact and winemaking pretence. These are world-class wines and Sami-Odi is the flag bearer for the new Barossa.

The Tasting Team with James Halliday.

Panel Decision

The wine below was chosen by the Tasting Team as a collective.

Taste the Top 100 events

Taste the Top 100: Melbourne
Thursday October 31, 2024
Panama Dining Room, Fitzroy
Book here

Taste the Top 100: Sydney
Wednesday November 6, 2024
Doltone House, Sydney
Book here