Based on reviews of 10,000 Australian wines, the six major awards and the 16 top varietal wines were announced by Mr Halliday in a program streamed live on Wednesday night and saw the Brokenwood 2014 ILR Reserve Semillon named the top semillon.

The wine, named in honour of Brokenwood's retiring chief winemaker-CEO Iain Leslie Riggs, will go on sale at $100 a bottle on October 1.

Mr Riggs said the 2018 was the 30th Graveyard release and the culmination of a perfect vintage and great teamwork, starting in the vineyard with the late vineyard manager Keith Barry and his daughter Katrina, now vineyard manager.

"Everything came together superbly," he said.

Brokenwood acquired the Graveyard vineyard in 1978, so named as it includes the site gazetted as the Pokolbin cemetery, although never used as such.

The Halliday awards are presented annually to coincide with the publication of Wine Companion, the $39.95 2021 edition of which has more than 4000 tasting notes, lists all award winners and is a comprehensive guide to Australia's best wineries, grape growing regions. A full list of more than 9000 tasting notes is available now online at www.winecompanion.com.

The winery of the year was South Australia's Barossa Valley Henschke Wines, the winemaker of the year was Brett Grocke of Barossa's Eperosa Wines, the value winery of the year was Best's Wines of Victoria's Great Western region, the dark horse winery of the year was Yarran Wines of the NSW Riverina and the new winery of the year was Varney Wines of McLaren Vale.

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