Best Winemaker of the Year: Liz Silkman

2025 Winemaker of the Year

Liz Silkman, First Creek Wines and Silkman Wines – Hunter Valley, New South Wales

Liz Silkman has been named the 2025 Halliday Winemaker of the Year.

Our Winemaker of the Year award is a celebration of the people who do their darndest to put stunning wines on our tables, and into our lives.

Liz Silkman is the chief winemaker for First Creek Wines and Silkman Wines and is also a contract winemaker for more than 20 clients.

You get the feeling, when you taste Hunter Valley winemaker Liz Silkman’s wines, that no challenge is insurmountable, and that with thought, knowledge and dedication, every lining can be silver. As a result, her case for our Winemaker of the Year couldn’t have been more compelling. To wit: as the winemaker at First Creek Wines, she notched 13 wines with a score of 94 or above, with 12 of them at 95 or above, and three at 97 or above. She may well have won this award, or gone close, on the strength of those results alone, though of course she is also the winemaker at Silkman Wines. Here she achieved a further 14 wines at 95 points or above, with six wines at 97 or above. This is an achievement for the ages: Liz Silkman is responsible for 27 wines in total, in a single year, with a score of 94 or higher, with nine of these at 97 or higher.

‘Liz Silkman,’ our taster for the Hunter Valley, Toni Paterson MW, says ‘has a rare ability to create complex, fruit-focused, immaculately crafted wines that satisfy a wide range of wine drinkers. Her championing of single-vineyard wines from unique, treasured sites is to be celebrated. Silkman gives classic varieties a contemporary expression, making them relevant to the modern wine drinker. And she praises and applauds her team in the winery and vineyard, as ‘no one can make great wine alone.’ Liz Silkman will never pour you a glass of excuses. She’ll pour you a premiership and tell you about the compromises and travails after dinner. She’s a rare talent, and she’s just put a spectacular year of winemaking together. She couldn’t be more worthy of our Winemaker of the Year award. – Campbell Mattinson

Silkman Wines is the brainchild of Shaun and Liz Silkman. This year, Liz will make 260 individual wines.

Liz Silkman says she never thought she’d be named Winemaker of the Year. It’s modest, considering the slew of awards she’s amassed throughout her career (including Dux of the Len Evans Tutorial in 2006). On top of her roles at First Creek and Silkman, Liz is a contract winemaker for more than 20 clients. She'll make 260 individual wines this year. “I am as passionate for them as I'm for First Creek... I take that really seriously. People say to me, ‘how do your contract clients do so well?’ Well, I treat them as my own.”

Liz met her husband Shaun while bottling Tempus Two at First Creek, Shaun's family business, of which she's now the chief winemaker. "I love working with Shaun. People talk about working with your husband, well, we wouldn't have Silkman if it wasn't for him." Liz says that as a contract winemaker she was ready to go out on her own. “The wines are someone else's. You get to have your input, but they get the final say.”

“I always say my day job is First Creek, but my passion is Silkman,” says Liz. “They're both quality brands, but with Silkman, I'm willing to take a bit of a risk.”

Previous Winemaker of the Year recipients include Robert Diletti (2015), Peter Fraser (2016), Sarah Crowe (2017), Paul Hotker (2018), Julian Langworthy (2019), Vanya Cullen (2020), Brett Grocke (2021), Michael Dhillon (2022), Glenn Goodall (2023) and Kate Goodman (2024).

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This is an edited extract from the 2025 Halliday Wine Companion, with reviews by James Halliday, Campbell Mattinson, Dave Brookes, Jane Faulkner, Jeni Port, Marcus Ellis, Mike Bennie, Philip Rich, Shanteh Wale and Toni Paterson MW. Cover art by Vera Babida.

Image credit: Silkman Wines/Elfes Images.