I told Gwyn Olsen when I first met her that I somehow expected her to be stern. It wasn’t the first time she’d heard that—apparently, it’s how she’d come across in photographs in the wine press. In reality, she is anything but; sharp, warm and witty, I was intrigued by how her mind worked, and how that feeds into what she creates.
I first heard of Gwyn during what seems like her breakthrough year of 2014, when she was named Young Winemaker of the Year in the now-defunct Gourmet Traveller WINE magazine. She was also named dux in the Advanced Wine Assessment Course (Awac) run by the Australian Wine Research Institute (AWRI).
It wasn’t until a decade later that I met her at the Australian Alternative Varieties Wine Show (AAVWS) in Mildura. That was November 2023, roughly a year after she had taken the job as senior winemaker at Henschke, based in South Australia’s Barossa region. A year before that, I had met her partner, Adam Walls—likewise sharp, warm and witty—at the Len Evans Tutorial in the Hunter Valley. I was a scholar that year, and he was a special guest, having been named dux in 2019. (Gwyn, too, was a scholar in 2015.) Adam, whose day job is as co-chair of the Wine Selectors Tasting Panel, inevitably gets a few honourable mentions in this conversation.
Also mentioned are members of Gwyn’s student cohort in Adelaide. They include Cherie Spriggs and Brad Greatrix (now at Nyetimber in the UK, and also namechecked by Tim Shand in episode 15); Nina Stocker, winemaker at Brave Goose in Victoria; Kate Day who makes wine under the In Two Minds label in Mudgee, NSW; Andre Bondar of Bondar in McLaren Vale; Shane Holloway, who runs Delamere in Pipers Brook, Tasmania, with his wife Fran Austin; and Dave Feldheim, who makes wine under the Beautiful Isle label with his wife Cynthea in Tassie’s Tamar Valley.
Among her formative wine experiences, Gwyn mentions a memorable bottle of wine consumed slowly and thoughtfully in the Languedoc, southern France. The producer is Tissot, a standard-bearer of the Jura region and a leading proponent of the unique Vin Jaune style. These yellow-hued wines from the Savagnin grape age for six-plus years “sous voile”—under a thin blanket of yeast—à la Fino sherry. The best ones show mind-bending depth and texture, with typical flavours of dried fruit, nuts and salty stuff that, yes, makes them magical with Comté cheese.
Other professional gigs included Villa Maria in New Zealand, where she worked with fruit from areas as varied as Auckland, Gisborne and Hawkes Bay on the North Island to Marlborough down south. (For more on the evolution of Villa Maria, listen to episode 16 with Steve Smith MW.) The next step was McWilliams, which has undergone major change since Gwyn hit a roadblock there. Mount Pleasant was the flagship winery in the Hunter Valley, while “the mothership” was the Hanwood winery in Griffith in the Riverina (also mentioned by Tim Shand). Again, the group was operating across several areas, including in New Zealand.
Pepper Tree/Briar Ridge also covered multiple regions. While Gwyn was based in the Hunter, the group also produces wines from Orange in NSW and Coonawarra and Wrattonbully in South Australia.
If there weren’t already enough acronyms here, the AWRI is where you might go to learn more about YAN—yeast assimilable nitrogen—a term that crops up here. Don’t worry if you’ve never heard of it, but it leads one to think about balanced vines, healthy fruit and happy ferments. (I really liked how Johannes Hasselbach of Gunderloch described this in episode 14.)
And lastly, we speak at length about Henschke, which is run by Stephen and Prue Henschke with other family members, including children Johann, Justine and Andreas, carrying the torch into the sixth generation. Hill of Grace Shiraz is the pinnacle wine, and the first vines planted on the vineyard in 1860 are known as “the grandfathers”. Mount Edelstone is another venerated family vineyard; outside the Barossa, the family also owns a site in Lenswood, referenced several times by Geoff Weaver in episode 21. Gwyn mentions several different wines produced by the family; please visit the Henschke website for more information on those.
