Join us in celebrating Jesse Smart, winner of the 2026 Riverina Young Achiever Award!
Developed by the Riverina Winemakers Association and proudly sponsored by the De Bortoli family in honour of second-generation visionary Deen De Bortoli, this award recognises emerging leaders across all sectors of the Riverina wine industry and invests in their ongoing professional and leadership growth.
Having started on the packaging line while completing his Mechatronics Engineering degree at the University of Wollongong, Jesse is now a Graduate Engineer and the go-to innovator when the business needs to work smarter. His standout contributions demonstrate how engineering and automation can build a stronger, safer, and more sustainable wine sector:
Operational Innovation: Revived a failed reverse osmosis plant by integrating remote monitoring and helped transition the packaging line toward paperless operations.
Safety & Efficiency: Spearheaded the rollout of automatic SSCC pallet labelling, removing the need for operators to climb off forklifts to manually label every pallet.
Cross-Departmental Leadership: Established a five-department working group to lift cask line compliance and led business-wide staff training on new systems.
Future-Focused Tech: Beyond his day-to-day role, Jesse is actively applying Artificial Intelligence (AI) to predictive maintenance for agricultural machinery.
Congratulations to Jesse on this well-deserved recognition and for showing the wider wine community the incredible impact young technical talent can bring to the industry!
