About Us

Our Team

Our goal, to the extent it can be done, is to allow our wines to make them­selves in as nat­ural a process as pos­si­ble. Hence we tend to avoid titles such as ‘wine­maker’ and pre­fer to con­sider our­selves as facil­i­ta­tors or inter­ested observers of the means whereby grapes become wine.
sim­i­larly, as a small fam­ily com­pany, we have no hier­ar­chy - just two some­what older and wiser bumps in the mid­dle of what is essen­tially a flat man­age­ment structure.

Bar­rie Smith

Bar­rie Smith co-founded Fran­k­land Estate with his wife Judi Cul­lam in 1988 in order to diver­sify their long estab­lished wool-growing inter­ests in the Fran­k­land River region. They both con­tinue to be actively involved in man­ag­ing the vine­yard and win­ery oper­a­tions but, increas­ingly, share this respon­si­bil­ity with their adult chil­dren. Hav­ing been raised in a wine pro­duc­ing region and farmed for over 30 years Bar­rie is par­tic­u­larly expe­ri­enced in pro­duc­tion mat­ters and is renowned for his inti­mate knowl­edge and deep respect for the wine­mak­ing poten­tial of the Iso­la­tion Ridge vineyard.

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judI cul­lam

Judi Cul­lam com­bines a pas­sion­ate inter­est in grow­ing and mak­ing wine with a dynamic approach to mar­ket­ing that has been inte­gral to the suc­cess of Fran­k­land Estate in Aus­tralia and major export mar­kets. Her inter­est and com­mit­ment to ries­ling has resulted in Fran­k­land Estate being con­sis­tently ranked among Australia’s lead­ing ries­ling pro­duc­ers and its spon­sor­ship of the Fran­k­land Estate Inter­na­tional Ries­ling Tast­ing that attracts par­tic­i­pa­tion from across the globe to a bien­nial cel­e­bra­tion of the qual­ity and diver­sity of the world’s finest ries­ling wines.

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ELIZABETH Smith

Eliz­a­beth Smith grad­u­ated with a Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence (Hon­ours) in Agri­cul­ture Sci­ence from the Uni­ver­sity of West­ern Aus­tralia in 1998 and sub­se­quently com­pleted fur­ther stud­ies in viti­cul­ture at Charles Sturt Uni­ver­sity. She gained fur­ther expe­ri­ence by work­ing vin­tages in Cal­i­for­nia, Spain and New Zealand and now divides her time between nur­tur­ing young wines and young children.

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Hunter Smith

Hunter Smith has a Bacher of Busi­ness (Agri­cul­tural Man­age­ment) degree from Mar­cus Old­ham Col­lege in Vic­to­ria and became a full-time mem­ber of the Fran­k­land Estate team in 1999. He is involved in every aspect of the win­ery oper­a­tions includ­ing finance and mar­ket­ing and is also respon­si­ble for man­ag­ing the family’s wool grow­ing interests.

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Gladys

Gladys is not real fam­ily - more avian fam­ily - but nev­er­the­less is a vital mem­ber of our man­age­ment team. As queen of our flock of guinea fowl Gladys leads her loyal sub­jects out into the vine­yard every day to eat bugs and pests that oth­er­wise might dam­age our vines. She is sen­si­tive and car­ing, strongly com­mit­ted to organic viti­cul­ture but dis­likes foxes and peo­ple who ques­tion the intellig.

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