THREE mates who met at university are now partners in an unlikely wine business whose vines flourish in the shadow of the spectacular Andes mountains.
Former Claremont resident Rob Bates-Smith met Tom Egan and Blair Poynton, also a former Claremont resident, while studying winemaking in Margaret River.
The trio found they had similar backgrounds and after working individually came together to form Jed Wines.
“We all did commerce degrees and strangely enough gravitated toward doing post-gradate in vinology ,” he said.
“That’s where we all met and then we went off and did our own thing internationally.”
The group has winemaking experience in Australia, France and North and South America.
After travelling the world’s wine regions in search of ideal vineyard sites, they settled on Argentina – in particular, the Uco Valley in Mendoza in the foothills of the Andes.
Bates-Smith said Argentina was the perfect location for them because there was nowhere else like it in the world.
“They’ve been making wine for 450 years, it’s just incredible,” he said.
“And they have incredible winemaking facilities.”
The three winemakers meet in Mendoza for three months each year and produce their own wines.
And while it sounds very exciting, Bates-Smith said it was a lot of hard work.
“It is glamorous until you get to the logistics of South America, which can be extremely challenging at times, but they’re just the most wonderful people to work with,” he said.
“We’ve been very fortunate to work with incredible producers.”
Bates-Smith believes Argentine wines are very well-regarded and the Mendoza area is perfect for their small batch winemaking.
“It is a super-high altitude and our vineyard is 1200m above sea level and the irrigation is the snow off the Andes,” he said.
“The high altitude just really supports medium-bodied approachable wine styles and that’s certainly what we love in wine.”
He said they produced a blanc de blanc sparkling, a sauvignon blanc, a pinot grigio and a limited malbec and cabernet franc.
“Malbec is an interesting one,” he said.
“It is Argentina’s flagship wine.
“It’s becoming big internationally; Australia is a little bit behind but it’s well known in Europe.”
Jed Wines exports mainly to Australia and Japan and the company is close to picking up a distributor in Scandinavia and the US.