Canberra winemaker Stephanie Helm steps out with The Vintner's Daughter

What were you doing when you were nine? Stephanie Helm was making her first wine.

It was a chardonnay. "White isn't a great one to start with, although chardonnay is a little bit easier because it's made in oak," she says. "The chardonnay was quite good and I let it develop in the oak. There was obviously some guidance from dad, like when mum helps you make a cake. It turned out not too bad."

Dad is Ken Helm, the face of riesling in the Canberra district, and Stephanie grew up surrounded by wines out in Murrumbateman. By the time she was 14 she had made a series of her own wines and become the youngest winemaker to take home medals at the local wine show. Now, at 29, she's the owner of her own small winery, which she's named The Vintner's Daughter. And a few weeks ago she added to her childhood medal haul with two more trophies in Canberra. At the Canberra International Riesling Challenge, her first Vintner's Daughter riesling took out the award for best Canberra district riesling, and Helm got the encouragement award for emerging winemakers.

She's the youngest of three. Her older siblings, Matthew and Natalie, were around while their parents, Ken and Judith, were setting up the winery. "Those early years were particularly hard for mum and dad. There was a drought at one point, they had neighbouring cattle eat the vines and there was a lot of heartbreak and stress, frosts as well," she says. "When I came along it was about 10 years later and it was a bit more relaxed and a bit more fun."

Ken says Stephanie was always precocious – she taught herself to read at an early age. And she was keen to learn about the family trade. "She used to say, 'Can I smell the wine?', and like an Italian family, I used to give her a little sip," he says. "By the time she was about nine I realised she had an inquiring mind and she was interested and that was when we encouraged her to do a bit of winemaking."

It was big news. Stephanie was featured in The Age and the Canberra Times. An archive story describes "a freckle-faced kid who bought her horse Prince with the proceeds from the sale of one of her vintages". In a front page story, she perches on top of a ladder in the Helm cellar while Ken looks on (Ken looks exactly the same back then as he does now). She was in the Australian Women's Weekly and other magazines. TV stations came calling – she turned down approaches from a national current affairs program.

Ken remembers there was a lot of attention – and while most of it was positive, not all of it was welcome. "We were a little bit cautious because people might think we were irresponsible," he says. "Under our supervision we were just encouraging an interest in winemaking. But Steph found it a bit overwhelming. At school her friends were saying, 'Do you drink every day?', and she was taken aback by that."

Stephanie says it was unsurprising that she knew how to make a bit of wine. "It was never a big deal to me until everyone made it a big deal," he says. "There was a lot of media at the time and people were very interested in the fact that there was a nine-year-old making wine."

By 2000, she had produced six vintages, three of which had won awards at wine shows, beating out her father's wines, and had her own mini label – The Stephanie Collection. But there were also plenty of other things in life.

"Dad always encouraged us to do other things; he never pushed us into the industry," she says. "I suppose I felt that I wanted to go off and do something where dad wasn't the expert."

Ken jokes that he always told his kids to do well for themselves because they were going to be inheriting a lot of debt from the family winery. They all have done well. Son Matthew is a chef who's worked at hotels around the world and currently runs a big casino operation in Macau. And daughter Natalie is a lawyer in Sydney.

Stephanie also thought about the law – she studied arts and law at the Australian National University. She met a young bloke from Lightning Ridge at a pub, and taught him to love wine. The young bloke, Ben Osborne, became her husband (he's now a bit of a wine snob, she reckons), and went to work for her father managing the Helm vineyards.

Stephanie took a job in the public sector. "But as soon as I ... ended up in an office, [then] I was in an office going, 'Oh, actually this isn't where I want to be'." She loved weekends, when she could head back to Murrumbateman and help out on the family winery.

When the chance came up to purchase Yass Valley Wines, she and Ben took it. It's in prime Murrumbateman territory. "Next to it is Clonakilla and Eden Road; we share a boundary with them," she says. "The soils are really fantastic – I'm quite amazed how different the soils are at Murrumbateman; it's quite different to the soil at dad's."

It yields different fruit from different parcels of land. "We saw that with the riesling because when I was doing that, dad obviously was making his rieslings as well. I remember I tried his classic dry – and I thought mine was pretty good until I tried [his]. But maybe I was being a little bit harsh because everyone seems to like it. You hold yourself to quite a high standard when you have those sorts of wines to compare."

She and Ben both work full time. They've got the winery to run. And she's studying for a wine science degree at Charles Sturt University. "It's becoming a little bit of a challenge," she admits. "Last year was a bit of a blur." They bought the winery in September, right at the start of growing season, and went straight into vineyard work. It was a frantic, busy season. "We just fitted in vintage around leave and weekends and called in all our friends to help. I'm not quite sure if they'll come back next year," she says, laughing. They did 10 tonnes of grapes and made about 1000 bottles of riesling.

The Vintner's Daughter is what Stephanie dubs a "micro boutique winery" – it's extremely tiny. But the workload doesn't faze her much. "Our family's always thrived under pressure; we're not people that can sit back and do nothing on a weekend," she says, laughing. The dream is to eventually quit their day jobs and work on the wine full time.

Ken's the chairman of the Canberra International Riesling Challenge but he doesn't judge or enter his wine. "The most important thing is that there's never, ever any question of bias," he says. When Stephanie's wine was decided, Ken says, he was at the mechanic's, getting the windscreen on his car repaired.

Anyone who goes into a family trade knows that it can be a double-edged sword sharing a profession with your mum or dad. But since Stephanie's started her own winery, the two Helms have long talks about the craft, sharing knowledge and tips without argument. "I see Steph's personality coming through in the wine and that's really quite a thrill because I don't want her to follow the Ken Helm recipe," her father says. "She's doing well and that's good. Our discussions now are more a broader discussion of winemaking. And that makes me think."

Ken says Stephanie's 2015 has all the attributes of a fine riesling. "It's not like mine – mine tends to be a lot more linear and have a lot more of a leaner style which the wine develops in the bottle over time," he says. "Steph's is more there, you enjoy it now. It's got very fine acid and a nice balance, so I think it's going to live a while." Stephanie agrees. "Dad's rieslings are quite piercing, lime acidity and I think probably mine is a bit softer, so better for [the] broader palate," she says. "I'm finding that my rieslings are looking quite good now and hopefully will continue to as it develops."

In the future she's interested in making gewurztraminer, which she calls "beautifully aromatic". There's a patch of it that grows in her vineyard, the earliest gewurztraminer grapes sown in the district, and she'd like to get them going. There's pinot noir to be explored as well. It's a future she is embracing.