Cellar Door Conversations: Matthew
Meet Matthew Hughes,
Co-owner and Manager of Mewstone Wines.
One of Tasmania’s most exciting new wine brands is Mewstone Wines. Owned by husband-and-wife Matthew and Catherine Hughes, the pair have teamed up Matthew’s winemaker brother, Jonathon (Jonny), to create their successful family-run business.
Matthew and Jonny were perhaps the most unlikely of four Hughes brothers to strike up a partnership – but perhaps their backyard cricket days were a sure sign as the oldest and youngest were indeed a formidable team. We caught up with Matthew, a self-professed “mad gambler” to find out why it made sense to take a gamble on Jonny and move from Sydney to start the Mewstone wine brand.
When did you launch Mewstone?
We officially launched in 2016. 2015 was basically a trial year where we made our first barrel of Mewstone Pinot. When I tasted that first vintage, I knew Jonny could do it. Up until that point, it was a bit of an unknown. It was the encouragement we all needed. And we haven’t looked back.
What made you decide this was what you wanted to do?
I’d always wanted to come back to Tassie. I left Tasmania to study honours in finance at Melbourne Uni. Half way through that year I was fortunate enough to get a job with Macquarie Bank in their equity derivatives team. I ended up working at JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley as well over the next 20 years. But my roots were in Tassie. We were a close family growing up – Mum had four boys under five (years old). It was crazy, but we had a great childhood. Dad was in the dairy industry so we grew up on dairy farms in the north of Tasmania – up around Scottsdale and Ringarooma. I spent the good part of a decade trying to convince Cathy to leave her hometown of Sydney and move to Tasmania. Starting Mewstone was the catalyst and she finally agreed. We’ve been in Tassie for about two years now.
What was Jonny doing all this time you’re up in Melbourne and Sydney?
Jonny went to New Zealand and did his wine studies over there and worked in Central Otago at one point. He did a few cellar hand stints at Langhorne Creek (South Australia), Mornington Peninsula (Victoria), Barolo (Italy), the Hunter Valley (New South Wales) and Okanagan Valley (Canada) before heading home to Tasmania. He landed the Assistant Winemaker role at Moorilla in Hobart and was there for about seven years before moving to a similar role with Pooley Wines.
Who does what?
Jonny does all the winemaking and the marketing/sales. People want to meet the winemaker, not the ex-banker. I basically handle everything else with a lot of help from our vineyard manager, Luke Andree.
How much has Mewstone grown since you launched?
All the fruit from our own vineyard goes into the Mewstone label. The vineyard is tiny so to grow into a sustainable business we started a second brand called Hughes&Hughes. For 2016, we secured about 10-tonnes of fruit to make our first Hughes&Hughes vintage. Last vintage we pressed around 70 tonne of grapes so it’s grown a little bigger each year. We’re in the process of completing a new 100 tonne winery and cellar door which will be ready at the end of January 2021. Having the new winery will be great as it will allow us to control the whole process that little bit more. There’s obviously not a lot of room to grow, but keeping it small and boutique in size is intentional to maintain the quality and consistency of our wines.