FREDERICK STEVENSON

Australia

Steve Crawford’s wine career began before he could vote, but it took him some time to pitch his own label, wary as he was of just injecting another range, much like the other ones, into a saturated market. Extensive forays into Italy and France gave shape to a sensibility that changed that, and his alias Frederick Stevenson was born. Crawford has a free-spirited approach to making wine, with no easy category fitting his style, but what is always apparent is the wines have an apparent flow, an unforced feel that never dips into ponderous intensity or ragged experimentation – they’re confident wines, but expressed with laid-back ease. Crawford was the Young Gun of Wine Winemaker’s Choice winner for 2015, and again in 2020.