Halliday Top 100 Wines 2025: Taster's pick

Introduced in 2024, the Taster’s Pick category represents each Tasting Team member’s personal highlight from the past year. 

Only one nomination per taster is allowed, making inclusion on this list a particularly strong indicator of excellence. 

The 10 wines on the below list range from $30 to $300 a bottle and have been scored 95 to 99 points. To learn more about why each wine was chosen, as well as serving tips, read this article from the Tasting Team.

2024 Agricola Vintners K'Sands, Barossa Valley

Apparently, you can't put Kalimna on a wine label or certain people puff their chests out and get all angsty, so here we have the 2024 K'Sands ... from the parish of Kalimna in the northern Barossa. It's essentially a small subregion of around half a dozen low, rolling sand hills that you can clearly discern if you're driving up Belvidere Road, and which have borne some of Australia's most famous wines ... hello early Granges. As is the norm, the fruit purity is off the charts with deep plum, cherry conserve and blue fruits. But there is a wilder intensity to its stare, with a gamey undercurrent, amaro, medina spices, hanging meats, clove and crushed bedrock. There's a little more chew to the pull of its tannins; a little more horsepower under the hood. Hoowee, it's good. Compellingly good. – Dave Brookes

2023 Bekkers Single Vineyard Selection Clarendon Syrah, McLaren Vale

From the Clarendon vineyard that Emmanuelle and Toby Bekkers acquired in '20 after being planted in the '90s. The history runs longer than that though, with the notably steep site first planted between 1842 and ’48. It’s clear this is a special vineyard, one of the coolest in the Vale, contour planted on vertiginous terraces. This is an extraordinary wine. Sweetly spiced, layered with sultry dark florals and blue and red fruits, this has such impeccable harmony on both nose and palate, the suppleness of fruit and perfectly extracted, caressing tannins dreamlike. Intense but weightless. Imbedded is a mineral line, lavender, some pressed violet, olive, nori, all so seamless. It’s startlingly good – a wine of breathtaking class and character. – Marcus Ellis

2023 Brokenwood Verona Vineyard Shiraz

Fragrant raspberries, supple dark cherries and pomegranates accented by a little violet and rose. The palate is perfectly poised and medium weight, with the fruit encircling a bright core of acidity. Fabulously vibrant and tight, yet also inviting, with a seriousness of structure and intensity. The south-facing vineyard was planted in '68, with soils similar to the Graveyard vineyard. It's moreish and long and, though it will cellar well, it will be hard to resist in its youth. – Toni Paterson MW

2022 Byrne Farm Shiraz Pinot Noir, Orange

A tiny smattering of reduction so this wine benefits from a swift decant. Here you'll uncover dense prune plums, Bing cherries and coils of raspberry fruit straps. Acidity upholds the promise of a crunchy red but is also a seriously structural wine. Tannins are a fine sandpaper of granular texture and there is a paperbark, cumin and ground ginger spice. The sinewy palate weight and zesty fruit means it's a wine you want to keep drinking, any day of the week. Keep these blends coming! – Shanteh Wale

NV Chambers Rosewood Old Vine Muscadelle, Rutherglen

The age of the solera, the talent of the blender and a family history that goes back generations tell quite a story here. Age is obvious in the deep amber hues and the complexity and intensity of caramel, dark malt biscuit, Christmas cake and toasted nutty flavour. So smooth, so luscious. And to think this is only the second tier – equivalent to the classic level – in the Muscat of Rutherglen classification. 375ml. – Jeni Port

95 points | $30 | Screw cap | 18% alc. | Chambers Rosewood profile | Winery website | @chambersrosewoodvineyards

2023 Green Door Wines Amphora Tempranillo, Geographe

Whole berries and whole bunches are wild fermented together in clay amphorae. This has a lot of sophistication, purity of fruit, concentration, length of flavour and fine tannin profile. Cherry cola, dark plum, fennel, toasty, woody spices, bitter dark chocolate, alpine herbs and green olive all find their way into the descriptors. Superbly balanced, chewy with fine, gravelly tannin, a herbal lift in dark, sweet-sour fruit pitched perfectly, and all of it al dente and fresh. Stellar example of the variety. – Mike Bennie

95 points | $40 | Screw cap | 14% alc. | Drink to 2033 | Green Door Wines profile | Winery website | @greendoorwines

2023 Mount Mary Triolet, Yarra Valley

65/25/10% sauvignon blanc/semillon/muscadelle. Crushed and destemmed with 20% whole bunches in the press. Barrel fermented and matured for 11 months in seasoned barriques. Brightly coloured. Intense aromas of confit lemon, quince, oyster shell and white flowers. Even at this early stage, there's a real sense of harmony on the chalky, saline, structured and very long palate. 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. – Philip Rich

2023 Murdoch Hill Orion Oakbank Syrah, Adelaide Hills

Polished and filigreed with high impact, this will meet your effort to decant with an exhale of floral aromas – roses, violets and sweet hibiscus. The fruit gleams on the palate, radiant in its ripeness, with an accordion of potent and enduring flavours. Pink peppercorn, blueberry, black cherry, red plum and the subtle sweetness of Austrian Oak (20% new) lend a plexus of tannin. It feels finespun and pure. It's an impressive hand right now, but time will make it worth the gamble. – Katrina Butler

2024 Thistledown Wines This Charming Man Single Vineyard Clarendon Grenache, McLaren Vale

Grenache of the Year, Red Wine of the Year and Wine of the Year from the 2026 Halliday Wine Companion. From the Smart vineyard – a Grand Cru of the Vale – with the great Bernard Smart (vale) immortalised on the front label. Fermented as whole bunches in a concrete pyramid, then matured in hogsheads, with 20% new oak. Such a delightfully pale-hued, fragrantly savoury and finely structured suite this year. A red aperitivo thread builds through the sour cherry, tart redcurrant, pomegranate and dried cranberry notes, with bitter orange, coriander seed, cardamom, white pepper, cinchona bark, cinnamon and bitter alpine herbs. There’s such engaging transparency to this, such serene refinement, such poise. It’s a wine of incredible depth and weightlessness, suspended over a tannic net of such intricacy. It's as good an iteration as I can recall tasting on release. A great wine. – Marcus Ellis

2023 tripe.Iscariot Kroos Chenin Blanc, Margaret River

Other Whites & Blends of the Year from the 2026 Halliday Wine Companion. Oh how I’ve missed Kroos, as Remi Guise didn’t make a ‘21 and ’22 because the fruit wasn’t to his exacting standards. Well hello ’23 and welcome back. This is a classy, complex yet delicious chenin blanc. It has the tantalising and distinct lemon-ginger infusion flavour with red apples, quince and an oyster shell brininess. The palate has texture, with the creamiest lees, yet everything reined-in by pure, exhilarating acidity. A cracking wine. – Jane Faulkner

Taste the Top 100

Taste the Top 100: Melbourne
Wednesday November 12, 2025
Panama Dining Room, Fitzroy
Book here 

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