On Friday 21st August, at the 2026 Sydney Royal Wine Awards Lunch, Wine Communicators of Australia (WCA) announced Peter Bourne – known as The Wine Man – as the 2026 NSW ‘Legend of the Vine’.
When presenting the Award, Brian Chase Olson, Chair of the WCA NSW Chapter Committee, explained, “This honour recognises someone of exceptional character; someone held in deep regard by their peers; and someone who has made an outstanding contribution to the Australian wine industry. And, because this award is created by us — Wine Communicators of Australia — the recipient must also embody excellence in how they write, speak, and share the stories of wine.”
Peter Bourne is an outstanding new addition to the Legend of the Vine, having spent five decades shaping how Australians understand, enjoy, and talk about wine. He has educated thousands – through tastings, masterclasses, corporate sessions, and public events – always with tremendous care and passion about the importance of the Australian wine industry.
He has built a national profile sharing stories about Australian wineries and the people behind them across multiple platforms: a long‑running contributor to Qantas Magazine | Travel Insider, a founding contributor to Gourmet Traveller WINE, a judge and writer for the Australia’s Best Cellar Door Awards, a Panel Judge for Australia’s Wine List of the Year Awards and also named WCA Wine Communicator of the Year in 2010.
Peter’s influence is especially profound in New South Wales. Throughout his career, he has championed NSW producers, hosted countless events, and helped shape the conversation about the state’s industry. He has helped introduced consumers to emerging regions like Orange, Hilltops, and Mudgee long before they were widely recognised, and written widely about NSW’s wine icons, giving national visibility to the state’s ever-growing wine quality.
When Peter accepted this award to unanimous applause from the crowd, he commented, “I am chuffed and humbled in equal measure. I really like the alignment with the numbers, celebrating 200 years of the Sydney Royal Wine Show and I’ve been in the industry 50 years -exactly one quarter of the time. I turned professional in 1976 when I opened a wine store, and it has been an amazing ride … if you think back 50 years Chardonnay was so small I needed to beg Murray Tyrrell for 2 or 3 cases of it. Chardonnay has had its ups and downs and now we produce world-class Chardonnay from this country. We are all a bit concerned about the muddle and the puddle we are in, but we’ve been through those cycles before. So now is the time for us to work a little bit harder; our wines have never been better and we should be really proud of how we’ve moved geographically and climatically and how we’ve adapted grape varieties to suit how we live and the opportunities we have.”
About the Legend of the Vine Award
The Legend of the Vine Award was first introduced in NSW in 2012 and to Victoria and South Australia since 2014 with annual awards issued in each of these states. The State Chapter Committee selects nominees from their state and propose their State recipient for that year, with the final winner decided by the WCA National Board. Previous NSW Legends of the Vine include Bruce Tyrrell (2025), Sally Evans (20240, Liz Riley (2023), Andrew Caillard MW (2022), Sandra Przibilla (2021), Lyndey Milan OAM (2019) and Huon Hooke (2018).