Cate Looney has been named Winemaker of the Year at the annual Australian Women in Wine Awards.
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Cate, the daughter of Bill and Dot from the Gunning Gap area, is a senior winemaker with Brown Family Wine Group.
As senior winemaker, Cate manages a team of four winemakers, who produce more than one million bottles of wine a year under brands including Brown Brothers, Innocent Bystander, Tamar Ridge and Devils Corner.
Right now, they are preparing for their busiest time of year as they plan to bring in the next vintage.
When the harvest begins in February, they will have teams of casual workers picking 24 hours a day, seven days a week to get those grapes in at the right time.
Cate and her colleagues are out in the field to taste, and test, and identify the critical timing of the harvest.
"It's a crazy time of our year but a great fun time too, because it's all happening," she said.
In the months that follow there'll be blending, testing, barrel work. Aged reds will come out of the barrel, and new moscatos will be prepared to bottle.
Year to year they might deal with frost, drought, flooding, smoke taint - any number of factors that impact all those in the agricultural industry.
It's hard work, Cate says happily, and in time they reap the rewards of that.
"I think that's why I love my job, it's so diverse," she said. "We're not doing the same thing throughout the year, it's very seasonal."
They're also constantly watching industry trends, most recently the rise of Prosecco, and experimenting themselves.
"There are wines that we really try to make consistent, because we know we have really loyal consumers of those," Cate said.
"But then we have a lot of freedom in our other wines. We have a kindergarten winery - it's the playground for trials."
While her choice of wine to enjoy changes season to season, there's a special place in Cate's heart as a winemaker for the sparkling wines made in the traditional, bottle fermented, method.
"I love the process," she says.
Cate is the first team member from Brown Family Wine Group to receive a top accolade from the Australian Women in Wine Awards and her colleagues have paid tribute to her.
"Cate is an outstandingly understated achiever. The award is a thoroughly deserved acknowledgement for a brilliant contributor to Brown Family Wine Group and greater industry," said Dean Carroll, CEO.
She has extensive experience as a wine show judge, is the Secretary of the Australian Sparkling Wine Show Committee and sits on the Charles Sturt University Wine Courses Industry Advisory Committee.
Cate completed her secondary schooling in Forbes before studying food technology at the University of Western Sydney.
It was while working a "late gap year" on a property between Wanaaring and White Cliffs that she recognised her direction, and her next step was to study wine science through Charles Sturt in Wagga Wagga.
Cate has now been with Brown Brothers 15 years, and they gathered at their Milawa vineyards in the King Valley to celebrate her anniversary two weeks ago and tuned into the live-streamed Australian Women in Wine awards.
