Brown Brothers wine: Katherine Brown on joining the family business

BROWN Brothers, in North East Victoria, is one of Australia’s best known family-owned wine companies, producing since 1889.

Wine sisterhood: Katherine Brown (right) with her sister, Caroline.

BROWN Brothers, in North East Victoria, is one of Australia’s best known family-owned wine companies, producing since 1889.

So when Ross Brown — the last of the third generation of four Brown brothers — announced his retirement as executive director at the start of April, it marked a significant shift for the company.

With Ross’s daughter Katherine as winemaker, and her sisters Caroline heading communications and Emma in marketing, it could easily be now referred to as Brown Sisters.

“We are now the face of Brown Brothers,” says Katherine of the sisterhood, adding that cousin Cynthia is a board director and cousin Eliza is chief executive of All Saints in Wahgunyah.

“Last year we changed the name of all our business holdings to Brown Family Wine Group, which is more inclusive of all the family in the business, but Brown Brothers will always be on the label.”

Images of Katherine Brown from Brown Brothers for profile piece in Country Living (The Weekly Times). ONE TIME USE ONLY!!

Katherine — who is the first female winemaker in the family — and the team of three other winemakers will be sharing some of that Brown winemaking pedigree at the Feast High Country Festival, running from Friday until May 19, at the Wine Blending Challenge event.

Twice a day throughout the festival, the winemaking team will show 10 participants how to blend and trial blends, who then submit a favourite for judging. (All four winemakers are also trained judges.)

The winner is invited back for an afternoon, including lunch, to work with the winemaking team and refine blends set for release.

“People are often nervous about tasting and talking about wine, but in some ways there’s no right or wrong answer,” says 37-year-old Katherine.

“They don’t realise the skills they have before they put them to use.”

Being born into Australian wine royalty, Katherine learnt to make wine from the age of six.

“Whenever there was a vintage my sisters and I would go out and squash grapes with our feet. It was science, but also fun. “Dad would get yeasts and show us the fermentation process, the bubbles, and smell, how the layers of skin would be on the top, the juice in the middle and the yeast at the bottom.

“We’d have a taste. We grew up appreciating wine not as alcohol, but as a beautiful product with stories behind it, that you’d talk about with the family around the dinner table.

“As a kid you didn’t feel silly saying a wine smells like plums, tomatoes in autumn, or a Redskins lolly. Even now I think we should move away from confusing words and let people use their own words.”

In Year 8 Katherine moved away from Milawa to boarding school in Melbourne and she says it’s the “family policy” to work away from home for at least four years.

So she completed a business and commerce degree at RMIT, worked in the coffee industry, later completing a wine marketing degree, before working in vintages in France.

“I was sitting in a Bordeaux winery when I realised I wanted to be a winemaker,” she says.

Katherine Brown, winemaker Brown Brothers

In 2013 Katherine graduated from studying oenology and viticulture at Charles Sturt, finally returning to Brown Brothers in 2015 as winemaker.

The business has changed considerably since John Brown planted 4ha of vines in Milawa, in 1885.

Brown Brothers now has more than 840ha of vines across six vineyards in Victoria and Tasmania, including the home site of Milawa, as well as Banksdale in the upper King Valley, Heathcote, Mystic Park in the Murray Valley, and in Tasmania at Kayena Vineyard as well as The Hazards.

They grow about 40 different grape varieties, this year harvested 16,000 tonnes and make more than 100 different wines, with trial wines always being made.

“The winemaking team is very much a flat structure and we all work on different varieties and wine styles. I work on fruity and dry,” Katherine says.

“Rose is my big passion and emerging varieties like Malbec.

“We all have a joint Brown Brothers philosophy, innovation and openness to trying different things. We all know the science behind it, so it’s about applying the art.

“This year in our trials I looked at yeast, looking for savoury characteristics such as watermelon and grapefruit, rather than sweet.”

Katherine says Brown Brothers has 150 staff, which underscores wine’s unique farming model.

“I can’t find another industry that owns land, harvests, makes a product, packages it, markets and sells it. We have a sales team in China and New Zealand,” she says.

“We cover every facet possible. Wine production is such a big business now. Sometimes we can forget we’re a family business.

“I often get asked whether I know how lucky I am to be born into such a family. A family business can be both a blessing and curse. I’m passionate about wine, but if I wasn’t it would be difficult.”

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