The SHW Team

Our Team Members

We are blessed with amazing people in the Symphony Hill Wines team. They are all caught up in the vision of our company to make some of the world’s best wines and to never stop learning and striving. Whenever our wines receive praise, these people need to be rightfully acknowledged.

Belinda Gray

Cellar door manager and Ewen’s right arm

Anyone who has had the pleasure to visit our cellar door will fondly remember Belinda. Since 2011 she has been the face of Symphony Hill to so many people visiting us while on the Granite Belt Always welcoming and smiling, she is definitely a one off. She has the wonderful skill of making people enjoy their experience as well as being extremely knowledgeable on the whole winemaking process from vineyard to bottle. It is a testament to her fabulousness that we frequently receive emails from people thanking her for treating them so well during their visit. When she is not serving customers, she assists Ewen with numerous activities including the logistics of wine deliveries to restaurants and wine club members.

Thomas Battle

Assistant Winemaker

Tom joined our team in 2012 and is currently completing a degree in Oenology. He is extremely hard working and has a voracious appetite to learn. Under the expert guidance of our winemaker Mike Hayes he has applied himself whole heartedly and is excelling. He is always calm and focussed and we see him as the future winemaker of Symphony Hill. No matter how long you train as a winemaker you never stop learning, and Tom has made some important steps along the learning curve. It is only in a boutique winery where we are crushing over 100 different batches of grapes in one vintage that a young winemaker can practically learn all facets of winemaking from fruit arrival to wine in bottle. In large wineries often cellar hands are assigned one task for the whole vintage, like entering data into a computer, or operating a crusher. At a small winery this is not the case as all people are involved with all facets of the process. Mike Hayes applies many different methods of winemaking across a vintage depending on the grape variety he is working with. As a result Tom has gained experience in many areas such as wild yeast fermentation, lees stirring, cold soaking, oxidative handling, sparging, secondary yeast introduction at end of fermentation, barrel maintenance, enzymatic selection and tannin manipulation.

2014 Vintage Wine Making Team

Due to massive increase in tonnage and wine batches made during the 2014 vintage we have increased our winemaking team to include Greg Goodman, Catherine Evans and Kinsey Johnson. These people have seamlessly integrated into our operations and worked like their lives depended on it. Even after a 13 hour day with hard manual labour they have left with smiles on their faces. They are our heroes and would not have been possible to achieve such a huge task without them. We love you all!