Comyns & Co. x Charteris hosted by Chris Morrison

Gather on Kensington St. | 12pm-12:30pm Sunday, 5 May

The Great Semillon debate - Let's be honest, Hunter Valley and Semillon go hand in hand. We talk to two winemakers who make a variety of Semillon styles across a broad range of brands to discover what makes this grape a match made in heaven with the Hunter Valley.

Tickets include tastings of Charteris Semillon and Comyns & Co. Semillon.

About Comyns & Co.

Scott and Missy Comyns are the husband and wife team behind the bold and edgy Hunter Valley wine brand Comyns & Co.

Scotty’s winemaking style is simple – to allow the fruit to express its individuality from vine to the bottle. The focus for Comyns & Co. is to create traditional styles of Semillon and Shiraz from small batch parcels of premium Hunter Valley fruit, whilst also venturing into the more emerging varieties and unique blends.

Scotty has had a stellar career to date. His 20 plus years in the industry working for premium wine producers, working with premium fruit, and accepting a swag of accolades along the way, has laid the foundations and created the passion and enthusiasm to create wines under his own family wine brand, Comyns & Co. Scotty was a finalist in the 2010 Wine Society’s Young Winemaker of the Year Awards, Alasdair Sutherland Scholarship winner in 2011 and a Len Evans Tutorial Scholar in 2014.

Missy completes the team as the “Positive Vibes Manager.” Wife, Mother and now “Cellar Door Manager,” Missy joins the wine industry from a background in the health industry, bringing her fun, energetic and genuine personality along with her. Her bubbly persona, positivity and a love of life brings warmth and honesty to Comyns & Co.

About PJ Charteris

Kiwi-born PJ’s journey has gone full circle and halfway back again, with wines that embrace both his beloved Central Otago and his adoptive Hunter Valley home. It’s emblematic as much as inevitable that the business is shared with his other love - partner Christina (Chrissi) Pattison whom he met while serving as head winemaker and Chrissi, Marketing Manager at Hunter icon Brokenwood Wines. PJ Cut his teeth pruning vines in NZ as a teenager before coming to Australia in 1988 to study winemaking at Roseworthy. He first set foot in the Hunter Valley in May that year after hitchhiking solo from Adelaide.

His first winemaking gig after graduating was back in the Hunter, where years later he’d end up spending 12 years at Brokenwood. When it came time to start their own label, some soul-centred magnetism drew PJ back to his motherland, spurred by visions of great Riesling, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir grown in Central Otago. Those vine varieties are famed as perhaps the most powerful transmitters of place, thus offering PJ an outlet to satiate that thirst for home and a means to convey those uniquely dramatic landscapes to wine-lovers elsewhere.

About Chris Morrison

Chris Morrison is an award-winning sommelier, respected wine communicator, judge, author and educator who has spent almost 25 years working in the hospitality and wine industries. As a sommelier Morrison is regarded as one of the country’s best and a former winner of The Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide Sommelier of the Year award. Chris is an experienced professional public speaker and presenter who has worked in all forms of broadcast media, across global sponsorship platforms including Melbourne Cup Spring Racing Carnival and the Australian Open tennis and now sits on the National Board for Wine Communicators of Australia. Chris represented Australian wine around the world as a communicator, educator and media spokesman for more than five years as the global spokesman for Jacob’s Creek wines. He was also awarded a scholarship at the prestigious Len Evans tutorial held annually in the Hunter Valley which is regarded by wine writer James Halliday as “the most prestigious wine school in the world” As the only sommelier selected to take place in the 2017 Wine Australia Future leaders program he worked alongside winemakers, grape growers, marketers and legislators mapping the future for the Australian wine industry. His first book ‘This is not a Wine Guide’ was released in 2018 and the same year Chris joined QT Hotels and Resorts as their Group Drinks Director working across their properties in Australia and New Zealand.

Proudly funded: