Q&A: Charlotte Symington, associate director – marketing, Symington Family Estates

By Andrew Catchpole

Published: 17 September, 2026

With fifth-generation Charlotte Symington becoming the first female board director in 144 years, she speaks to Harpers about innovation and reinvention at this venerable port estate.

Launching your 2024 vintage, you said port has changed. How so?

A big thing is the innovation that goes on in the wineries, in the vineyards, so the wines this year have been extremely approachable, and that wasn’t something you would say about vintage port even 20 years ago. The narrative was always ‘age your vintage ports, keep them, they’re not ready yet’. I’ve definitely noticed over time, speaking generally about vintage ports, this greater approachability, more joy when young.

How important is it that you are the first female board director at SFE?

My great, great grandfather, Andrew James, came here in 1882 and it’s a bit embarrassing, actually. I guess historically we have always been a traditional family business, in the sense that my father came into the job because he was the eldest son. [But] one of the really important things is that our generation are all coming in based on our merit, on our experience, rather than just who we are. I feel extremely proud of the fact that I am now a female member on the board, but more important is that I definitely worked at it. I joined Fells in the UK in 2013 and then I moved back home in 2018, but prior to that, I’d been working in a mixture of events, PR and marketing in London. We’re all encouraged to go off elsewhere, find something that we’re passionate about, learn on the job. Obviously being a family member helped, but the fact that there is a woman on the board is a positive thing.

What is your own vision for SFE?

When my father [Paul Symington] joined the business in the ’70s, port was the sole focus. We hosted a lot of journalists and customers here in Porto and up in the Douro. But today we’ve three main pillars of our business – port, still wines, and hospitality and tourism – and we employ over 650 people. So our business is a very different beast to what it was back then. And again, something that’s changed a lot is that SFE had always been a B2B company, selling to the likes of Fells, which then sells on to Tesco, etc, so we’ve always been quite far removed from the end consumer. And something that I felt really passionate about is building our relationship with the consumer.

We are still very focused on the trade – it’s our bread and butter, it’s very important to us. But we felt it was really important to expand that and speak directly to the consumers. Social media has really helped us to navigate that, but we’ve also invested quite heavily in terms of where we pop up, whether it’s events, activations, partnerships, etc, and that’s something I think port really needed.

Can you tell us more about innovation and diversification?

When people say ‘we’re drinking less but better’, port fits in that premium niche exactly. If you’re not going to drink three or four, [but] only one or two, maybe you’re prepared to spend that little bit more, then port fits that moment. That premium segment has been a real focus for us. What we’ve tried to do is innovate, pushing the boundaries of what port can be, whether the product or the packaging.

If you look at Cockburn’s 10 and 20-year-old and LBV today, in terms of the colours we’re using, the illustrations, we’re giving much more storytelling than we’ve ever given before to any of our products, and that is really exciting. We’ve gained new supermarket listings as a result, which is amazing. A lot of spirits brands would love to have the history and heritage that comes with a lot of our brands, so it’s ‘how we can respect that heritage, but bring port into the 21st century’. We worked with [design agency] Stranger & Stranger – we really felt that we had a great opportunity to do something exciting.

With the Cockburn’s Tails of the Unexpected range we challenged my uncle Charles to create wines specifically for mixing and we designed these amazing products. And the feedback has been incredible. We’re still on a journey, though, none of this stuff happens overnight. What we’re doing is opening doors to new consumers who potentially wouldn’t otherwise see port fitting into their life. We’re not trying to change what port is, we’re trying to change how port is seen [and] we need to continue pushing the boundaries, continue innovating.

What of the tourism side?

The north of Portugal receives about seven million tourists every year, so we’ve got an amazing opportunity by educating, explaining to people what port is. We get a huge amount of visitors every week coming through our two visitor centres in Porto and in the Douro. Groups – and groups of girls – in their 20s, 30s and 40s, all the way up and there’s so much to be said for people having an experience and discovering and taking that back to their country.

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