The SHW Team

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.