Team
The ‘5 Day a weekers’ (or more)
Michael & Fillipo Scarpantoni
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The two brothers both have title of ‘Director’, though Michael tends to oversee the overall management of the winery and sales and Filippo manages anything and everything to do with the vineyards. Both Michael and Filippo are very hands on, so it’s not exactly a rare thing to see either of them in the winery or vineyard getting their ‘hands dirty’ for much of the day and soon after jumping on the ride-on mower to do the lawns and then getting cleaned up to host a wine dinner or tasting in the evening. As a result, their desks tend to accumulate more dust than most, that and they aren’t exactly world champions at delegating jobs to the rest of the team...
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Paula Stevens
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Paula has been at Scarpantoni Wines for over 10 years now, so is most certainly part of the woodwork at the Estate. None of our wine stocks move without her approval and her multi-faceted role is a very important one at the winery. Luckily for the rest of us, she doesn’t exactly take too many sick days as the place tends to grind to a halt without her, especially when we are bottling.
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Karen Palm
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Karen often claims she has the best job, as she tends to start late in the morning and leave by around 3:00pm. Karen is the financial controller and a member of the resident comedy relief team and will often talk to cellar door customers about anything other than the wines given the opportunity. The animated daily conversations around the Scarpantoni lunch table would not be the same without her.
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Jim Mottillo
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Jim is a long term friend of both Michael and Fil, having gone to school with Fil and been his best man at his wedding, and he shares a passion for vintage motorcycles with Michael. Jim has had a varied working life before he came onboard at Scarpantoni, so brings assorted skills other than just his hard working nature and sense of humour to the winery. Jim and his wife Sonia are also grapegrowers in the region, and their small plantings of Shiraz and Grenache often ends up playing a role in our wines.
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David Fleming
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David is our full-time winemaker, working closely with Michael and Fil to create our delicious range of wines. He is from a hotel-owning family in Melbourne, so grew a taste for wines from a young age, quite possibly younger than the authorities would have really approved of. David has worked for a number of wineries around Australia and completed vintages in Italy, Hungary and the US, bringing plenty of experience from a wide range of wineries large and small.
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The ‘not quite 5 day a weekers’
The Scarpantoni teams also extends to those who aren’t at the winery on a full time basis, but whose contributions are still very important, such as Paula Scarpantoni, mother of Michael and Filippo, who is retired from working at the winery as such, but lives very close to the winery and joins the team for lunch each day, bringing with her some rather special home-cooked Italian dishes.
Mirella Scarpantoni
Mirella is the youngest daughter of Paula and the late Domenico Scarpantoni and has worked in the family business all her life in one way or another. Currently she looks after the sales of our wines in the greater Fleurieu and Adelaide Hills regions in restaurants, cafes and retail outlets.
Jenny Lee Holt
Jenny Lee lives very close to the winery and has been a part-time member of the team for over a decade. Jenny Lee is always smiling, has a positive influence on everyone at the winery and treats us all to her handy cake making skills on a regular basis.
Greg Gentel
Greg is an old hand in McLaren Flat, having previously run the local Continental Deli with his family and as a result has known the Scarpantoni’s for many years. Very much a jack of all trades, he can often be found somewhere in our vineyards assisting Filippo, or doing a wide range of tasks in the winery.
Jarrod Scott
Jarrod looks after the much of the marketing requirements at Scarpantoni Wines, yet is rarely at the winery in person except when feels the need to hassle the winemakers and try the new wines in tank, in the lab, or raid supplies of those that have been freshly bottled, all of which he likes to do often enough. Jarrod is the full-time manager of our limited-production sister winery,
Oxenberry Wines, which is only 5 minutes down the road in the centre of McLaren Vale.
The Cellar Door Team
During the week, members of the ‘5 day a week’ winery team tend to be the ones who look after our cellar door guests and conduct wine tastings, but on the weekends and public holidays we have ‘old’ Scarpantoni hands such as Gerlinde, who has been working in the Scarpantoni cellar door for a decade and we also have Carly, daughter of our 5-day-a-weeker Karen Palm, along with Fil Scarpantoni’s daughter Rachael, who is around when she needs a break from her uni studies (or when she isn’t playing netball, or drinking hot chocolate at our nearby sister cellar door, Oxenberry Farm).
