Meet our family
Meet the people responsible for taking your Wine from Berry to Bottle
Pat Berry
FOUNDER
Simon Berry
Winemaker & General Manager
Jo Berry
Cellar Door, Events, Marketing & Accounts
Grace Berry
Cellar Door Manager
Dale Hennighan
VITICULTURE & CELLAR DOOR
SEB KNOPKE
VINEYARD & MACHINERY
Scroll down to see a brief bio on our family members or click on an image to jump to a team member.
pat Berry
founder
Born in the UK, Pat and her late husband Mike moved the family to Melbourne in 1973 where they lived for four years before again moving to Hong Kong. From there they travelled all over South East Asia, living in both Singapore and Vietnam for a time before returning to Australia in 1992 where they settled on the Gold Coast for a time.
Seeking a new challenge they purchased 192 acres of land in Goodger, just South West of Kingaroy and started planting grapes vines. Soon after they extended the project to include a state of the art winery all with supporting sheds and infrastructure.They also built a home next to the vineyard and that has been home ever since.
They undertook viticulture and winemaking studies at Dookie College, Victoria whilst establishing their business and opened to the public in 2002. Pat and Mike worked in all areas of their new business, gaining an understanding for viticulture in South Burnett’s climate and soon started winning awards for their wines.
Infecting their son Simon with the same passion on his return from the UK in 2006, the family business continued to grow. With Mike’s health taking a turn in 2014 after being diagnosed with Multiple Systems Atrophy (MSA), Simon and his wife Jo returned to the family business to start the next generation of Berry to Bottle.
Whilst mum remains very spry in her 80’s, she works more behind the scenes now, keeping a watchful eye over Simon and Jo. She is responsible for quality control, thoroughly tasting every drop that we produce and still makes the pizza bases for our famous wood-fired pizzas and our yummy desserts that we serve at weekends.
Simon Berry
WINEMAKER
Born in the UK, Simon’s family moved to Melbourne in 1973 where they lived for four years before again moving to Hong Kong where he grew up. Whilst living in the South East Asia, Simon attended school and then University in England. After graduating he made a life in London before the lure of Australia drew him back in 2004.
Joining his parents Michael and Patricia, the founders of Kingsley Grove Estate, he found his passion for wine under the expert tutelage of winemaker Ross Whiteford. During this time Simon learned many innovative winemaking techniques from Ross that enabled them to produce a number of award winning wines.
Whilst working in Kingaroy, Simon met his wife Joanne and in 2006 they moved to Brisbane where Simon returned to the IT industry, managing IT in a number of Brisbane based companies. Whilst this provided the stability Jo and Simon sought to raise a family, Simon remained involved in Kingsley Grove, assisting in the vineyard and winery every vintage in various capacities.
In 2014, Simon left IT behind and moved with Jo and his two girls back to Kingaroy to re-join the family business. As winemaker and General Manager for Kingsley Grove, with the invaluable assistance of Jo, they continue to grow and fine-tune both the business and the wine Kingsley Grove produce. With a strong sense of place and region, Simon seeks to refine the winery’s wine styles to display the character and qualities of the region.
His approach to winemaking in the South Burnett is to produce wines that reflect the unique qualities of the region’s climate, geography and soil. Embracing this old world concept of Terroir and combining it with modern Australian winemaking techniques he strives to produce wines that demonstrate a regional identity and which are suited to the Queensland climate and palate.
This speaks of Simon’s immense passion for winemaking and for the wine and tourism industry in the South Burnett. Working with his mother Pat, and with Jo, they dream of building a regional identity for South Burnett wines as the premier winemaking region of Queensland and to reignite the passion and awareness for South Burnett as a tourism destination.
Jo Berry
Cellar Door, Events, Marketing & Accounts
Joanne Berry has been in the Tourism Industry in one capacity or another since leaving school in 1989. Jo went to the University of Technology Sydney and received a Bachelor in Leisure Studies, Tourism. With this she worked for several years in the tourism industry based in Sydney.
In her tourism experience she has had many years of working face-to-face with the consumer, waitressing and assisting in her family’s businesses which were always tourism based. Her parents owned a café and then Management Rights, which Jo worked and keenly learned the businesses.
She moved to Kingaroy in the 2004 to work in the next family business, the Big 4 Caravan Park. At this time, Kingaroy’s tourism was booming. Jo was involved in marketing and sales of the park and by extent the South Burnett Region as a whole.
It was during this time in Kingaroy that she met Simon Berry. They moved to live and work in Brisbane and raised a family.
Jo moved back to Kingaroy with her young family to help manage her husbands’ family vineyard/winery, taking the role of Sales & Accounts Manager.
Jo is very passionate about Kingsley Grove and the South Burnett and knows that the success of her business depends greatly on the success of the region as a destination for tourism. Jo is very interested in contributing to the tourism committees in the South Burnett that are responsible for reviving our struggling tourism industry to its former glory days.
GRACE Berry
Cellar Door MANAGER
Grace is Simon and Jo’s daughter & Mike and Pat’s first granddaughter. Grace was born in Kingaroy and moved to Brisbane with her family when she was little. She moved back to Kingaroy with her family in 2014.
She has conducted the majority of her schooling in Kingaroy with a brief stint at Toowoomba Anglican School.
Grace completed her High School Year 12 certificate last year. Her qualifications include a Hospitality Certificate III.
Grace has worked in the Cellar Door since she was 12 years old, starting with dishes. She has worked her way up the ranks to Cellar Door Manager. Grace works weekdays in the Cellar Door. Her achievements this year have been to develop and implement a weekday lunch menu and design new marketing ideas for social media.
Our family is proud of Grace and maybe she will take over one day.
DALE HENNIGHAN
Trainee Viticulturist & CELLAR DOOR STAFF MEMBER
Dale is a born and bred West Aussie. He worked in chicken farming before moving East.
He originally moved to Queensland because of his love for music festivals and stayed in the Sunshine State after meeting his fiancée.
Dale began work with Kingsley Grove as a gardener with his own business. We took such a shine to him, his natural aptitude for viticulture and his dedication to his work, that we brought him on as a valued member of our Kingsley Grove family.
Dale works in the vineyard during the week and on the weekend mans the pizza oven, cooking pizzas to perfection.
We aim to be able further his Viticulture journey with sponsoring him in viticulture training to widen his vineyard knowledge.
SEB KNOPKE
VINEYARD OPERATIONS & MACHINE SPECILIAST
Seb has been working with us at Kingsley Grove Estate for the past 2 years, and is vital to maintaining all aspects of our beautiful grounds.
Seb is Kingaroy born and bred and constantly shows us he is a jack of all trades.
On finishing high school he went on to complete his Certificate III in agricultural studies and has worked on local farms. This has provided us with an invaluable, rounded team member who is up for any challenge.
In addition to maintaining the grounds, he is our machine specialist, maintaining all our equipment and does the majority of herbicide and fungicide applications in the vineyard. He is also integral in applying and removing bird netting as well as getting involved with machine harvesting.
We certainly could not manage without him!