Nathan Brown, 40, is a one-man winery. He sources and buys the grapes, makes the wine then sets out on the demanding task of selling and marketing it.

Owner of the award-winning Linear Winery, he says: “Vintage is like eight days a week once [it] starts; once there’s ferments going, you’ve got to be here every day for two and a half months, like, it just has to happen.

“The hardest thing in the wine industry is to sell wine, it’s easier to make than it is to sell, it’s building a brand, it’s building a relationship with customers and getting people to understand and trust what you do, whether that’s restaurants or direct to customer sales and people that you meet along the way to try your wine.”

He says the only external help he uses is a truck that travels throughout the region bottling about 90 per cent of Canberra’s wineries.

He says he would definitely like to expand his one-man team eventually, but is cautious, as he wants to be sure the growth is sustainable.

Owner of the popular Pulp Kitchen restaurant for five years, the now father of two decided his plans to start a family and late nights in the hospitality industry weren’t stacking up.

“I’d always loved wine and obviously I was very closely related to it with what I was doing for work and so the timing actually just worked out perfectly,” he says. 

He opened Pulp Kitchen for the last time on Valentine’s Day 2017. Two weeks later he was in a winery working on a vintage. 

This led him to studying wine science at Charles Sturt University in 2018, and eventually the launch of his own label. 

Six years on, his label Linear has won him a place as a finalist in the Young Gun in Wine Awards list of Australia’s top 50 winemakers. 

“With Young Guns, it’s not just about your wines, it’s about your brand, it’s about what you’re doing in the industry, it’s about, you know, where you’re headed and what you’re trying to do,” says Nathan.

“So to get your wines looked at by a panel of people who are in the industry, and are in the know, and to come through that process and be included in that Top 50 is awesome.”

Only two ACT wine makers were featured in the awards – the other is Chrissie Smith, of Intrepidus Wines.

Nathan acknowledges that Canberra doesn’t jump to the front of people’s minds when thinking about wine.

“People can easily drive from one side of Canberra to the other without seeing a vineyard or a winery,” he says. 

Nathan’s winery itself is relatively hidden, located just off Spring Range Road, but he says the Canberra wine industry will be buoyed by the focus on climatic conditions and alternate varieties. 

In the regions of Tumbarumba, Gundagai, The Hilltops and Murrumbateman, where he and other Canberra-based wineries source their fruit, alternate varieties such as the Austrian grüner veltliner and Spanish tempranillo are two varieties gaining popularity, as they suit the warmer climate. 

“In Australia, we just went out and we planted all the common varieties everywhere,” he says. 

“All these new varieties that are kind of popping up in Australia now, we call them alternate varieties, it’s because we’re really starting to think about the climate and where things should be grown and how things should be grown.”

Nathan says it is these alternate varieties that are the key to Linear wines, and what made his 2023 vintage season so exciting.

He also makes fiano, grenache and shiraz, with fruit sourced from The Hilltops, and gewürztraminer, chardonnay, Gamay En Carbo and pinot noir sourced from Tumbarumba.

He says he is working on a grenache, syrah, and mourvedre (GSM), and that a sangiovese will be making a comeback in his 2024 vintage.   

Nathan says Linear can be found in most of the independent bottle shops in Canberra and some restaurants.

The winners of the six trophies – the Young Gun of Wine, Best New Act, People’s Choice, Winemaker’s Choice, Danger Zone, and the Vigneron – will be announced on June 18. People’s choice voting is at  younggunofwine.com/peopleschoice