Ross Brown AM

For his whole life, Ross Brown AM has had a passion for Australian generational family businesses, and the wine industry and its intersection with tourism.  

He recently stepped down as Executive Director of Brown Family Wine Group, established by his grandfather in 1889, where he remains on the board.  

“Today, Brown Family Wine Group is one of Australia’s leading wine companies with the brands Brown Brothers, Devil’s Corner, Tamar Ridge, Innocent Bystander and Pirie,” he says.  

“For the 60s and 70s, my three brothers and I worked with our father to develop our family farming and wine business into a family global wine company.  

“My ‘gift of the gab’ landed me in Sales and Marketing ... where I was fortunate enough to be involved in a number of boards, committees and working groups, including Australian Grape and Wine, Wine Australia, Wine Victoria, North East Tourism, Australia’s First Families of Wine, Tasmanian Department of State Growth and Wines of the King Valley.”  

For his work, Ross was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for significant service to wine making industry, and to tourism.  

Ross says his greatest passion within the industry is the cooperation inside of it, which he believes “is imperative to both the wine and tourism industries”.  

“This mindset has enabled the industry to become one of the greatest cooperative industries in Australia,” he says.  

He says his greatest achievement, however, is working to continue the success of Brown Family Wine Group into the future.  

“Our company vision is to ‘inspire the love of wine for generations to come’,” he says.  

“This initiative has enabled us to create new wine varieties that are sustainable for the environment, such as Cienna and Tarrango, and to even create zero-percent alcohol wines which I never would have considered 10 years ago!” 

As we look back on the last 50 years of the Australian Honours system, Ross says it is incredibly important to continue to “keep a spotlight on Australian-owned companies, particularly in agriculture, manufacturing and tourism”.