Winemaker of the Year: Steve Flamsteed

By The Tasting Team

18 Aug, 2026

Steve Flamsteed from Decades, Salo and Wine Network Consulting is the 2027 Halliday Winemaker of the Year.

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2027 Winemaker of the Year

Steve Flamsteed, Decades (Tasmania), Salo (Yarra Valley), Wine Network Consulting

A supremely talented, experienced and deeply respected winemaker with an exceptional palate and outstanding taste in music, Steve Flamsteed – Flamo to those fortunate enough to call him a friend – is a quiet achiever who leaves a mark.

Born and raised in Toowoomba, Queensland, winemaking came to Flamo via a circuitous route, initially completing a chef’s apprenticeship and working for a time in London, Chamonix and Spain before a vintage alongside Aussie winemaker Dean Hewitson at Beaujolais estate Château du Bluizard.

This led to a winemaking degree at Roseworthy Agricultural College, although the culinary arts still called strongly. After graduating in ’93, he returned to France, courtesy of a Queen’s Trust Scholarship, to study cheesemaking.

Steve Flamsteed

Flamo is one of the good guys of the Australian wine industry. We are so lucky to have someone of his calibre, integrity and ability leading it today.

“I couldn’t decide if I wanted to be a chef, a cheesemaker or a winemaker… I wanted to be all three,” he says. “But wine was so exciting back then, in the late ’90s, early 2000s, things were really happening. And so, I was like, ‘You know what? Wine's where I'm going to put my focus’.”

Following a stint at Milawa Cheese Company, a vintage at neighbouring Brown Brothers, and three years at Leeuwin Estate in Margaret River, he has been based in the Yarra Valley, most notably at Giant Steps where, between ’03 and ’21, he catapulted its wines, vineyard sites and reputation to new heights.

The ’06 Len Evans scholar still consults to Giant Steps in his role as director of Wine Network Consulting, as well as a handful of other cool-climate wineries across Australia and New Zealand, including Eldridge Estate on the Mornington Peninsula.

Steve Flamsteed

He still has Salo, the label he founded in ’08 with David Mackintosh in the Yarra Valley, as well as an exciting new project in Tasmania called Decades (the winner of the 2027 Best New Winery award), with good mate and fellow Roseworthy-alumnus Brad Rogers.

A family man and a mentor and champion of young winemakers, Flamo is one of the good guys of the Australian wine industry. We are so lucky to have someone of his calibre, integrity and ability leading it today. It is for these reasons, among others, that Flamo has been crowned the 2027 Halliday Winemaker of the Year.

Words by Dave Brookes, Jane Faulkner and Anna Webster