Chris Tyrrell

Chris Tyrrell

Born 1982
Fifth Generation
Chief Executive Officer

Born and raised on the Tyrrell family estate, Chris, together with his sister Jane and his brother John, represent the fifth generation of the Tyrrell family winemaking dynasty.

In 2001, at the age of 18, Chris began his winery apprenticeship during the first vintage after the passing of his grandfather and Australian winemaking legend Murray Tyrrell. Since then, Chris has worked in a variety of different positions within the family wine company. Between vintages, he worked in the sales and marketing department in Sydney until the end of 2005, when he returned to the Hunter Valley to work full-time in the winery.

Between 2006 and 2014, Chris was the assistant winemaker at Tyrrell’s, working closely with two of the great modern-day Hunter Valley winemakers, Chief Winemaker Andrew Spinaze and Red Winemaker Mark Richardson. In recent years, Chris and the rest of the Tyrrell’s winemaking team have focused heavily on
improving, and in some cases reinventing, their classic regional styles, and single vineyard wines. Specifically, they’ve been looking at ways to evolve Tyrrell’s flagship Semillon, Chardonnay, and Shiraz wines from the family estate, which is home to some of the world’s oldest vineyards.

In November 2012, he was a scholar at the Len Evans Tutorial, said to be the “most exclusive wine school in the world”. In late 2014, Chris was promoted to the role of Chief Operating Officer, overseeing all facets of vineyard management and wine production at the Hunter Valley winery. In July 2023, Chris assumed the role of Chief Executive Officer, bringing Tyrrell’s officially into its fifth generation of family business. 2023 also saw Chris take on the role of President of the Hunter Valley Wine and Tourism Association, a not-for-profit organisation that acts as the destination marketing body for the Hunter Valley. Chris is an active judge on the Australian wine show circuit and has also completed the Winemakers’ Federation of Australia ‘Future Leaders’ program, which focuses on developing the next generation of Australian wine industry leaders.

Chris and his wife Tegan have two boys, Henry and Edward, the sixth generation of the family to be born and raised on the family estate. Chris’s undertaking as leader of his family business is to
ensure the further strengthening of Tyrrell’s position as one of the world’s greatest family-owned wine companies for the future generations of his family.