Ladies in Red article in weekend living, Herald, Scotland, 
Saturday 8th March, 2003

Jane Wilson has a clear idea about the wine she likes. She has a passion for complex reds. She wants soft tannins. She always plumps for an Australian. But Jane, 43, from Oban, does not have the luxury of simply picking out a few choice bottles at the supermarket. She is in charge of making the wine that the rest of us choose to buy.

Pamela Geddes is also a wine maker, from Scotland and with a strong belief in how her wine should taste. ''Not for me these wishy-washy wines at 12%,'' says Pamela resolutely. ''I want good ripe grapes to make good fruit-driven wines. I want it to have drinkability. I want it to make drinkers want another glass.''

It would appear that both women know exactly what they want. And how to get it. Jane is one half of a successful partnership, with husband David, which forms Australian company, Lowe Family Wines. The reds, which are solely Jane's domain, are not ordinary in-your-face Aussie reds. They are gentler, but no less serious, and they are doing extraordinarily well in restaurants, especially Scotland, ''as they don't overwhelm food''.

Pamela, too, is making herself a name. The wine-making consultant to Moreno Wines, she is also setting up her own firm, Lobban Wines, based in Spain.

In an industry often perceived to be male-dominated and highly competitive it is refreshing to hear of two women who are not only high profile players in the winemaking process but whose companies are happy to make a noise about their femininity - and their Scots origins.

Historically, the few women who have held major positions in vineyards have often been overshadowed by the wine name or the men who came before them. The name of Nicole-Barbe Clicquot-Ponsardin is the Veuve Clicquot which graces every bottle of house champagne, yet did you know she was just 27 in the early 1800s when her husband died and she took over their vineyard? She turned it into one of the world's best Champagne houses.

Some see modern echoes of her story in Jane Hunter, viticulturalist at Hunter Wines in New Zealand. Jane was widowed when her husband died in an aeroplane crash in the 1980s, and has gone on to develop the business they established together to produce some of the country's finest wines. Then there's Madame ''Lalou'' Bize-Leroy - formerly of Domaine de la Romanee-Conti, the world's most expensive burgundy - who has set up her own rival firm.

Scottish women in particular have made their mark. Australia's first registered female vigneron and winemaker was Mary Laurie. Mary and husband Buxton were from Scotland and in the late 1800s became widely praised winemakers. Although a talented winemaker in her own right, Mary did not share the limelight with her husband. But when he died, aged 52, she continued to develop the family business with her eight children and make great wines. Indeed, she continued even when bedridden by a stroke, issuing instructions from her room.

Scots-born Jean Parker was one of the first women winemakers in South Africa. Like many of the women in winemaking her story is marked by tragedy as her husband died in a shooting accident. According to her sons, who now run the Altydgedacht winery, most widows would have given up, but not Jean ''who came from tough Scottish stock''. She took a course in winemaking at Elsenburg and built the winery's reputation, passing the thriving business on to her sons.

In fact, Jane Wilson believes it's this ''Scottishness'' which makes women perfectly suited to winemaking. ''The Scottish tendency is to produce well-travelled, well-educated people; those who are open-minded with a strong practical streak. Scots women are no exception,'' she says. ''Scotland has a great food history, as well as being a country of amazing natural ingredients and this might help them to see potential in becoming campaigners and sellers of good food and drink.''

Being female is another advantage as it is widely believed women have a more sensitive palate. ''I would say that everyone's palate is different,'' Jane says. ''But there does seem to be a gender bias as well as individual differences". ''I took over the reds, while David concentrates on the whites, because I liked a certain tannin structure and preferred hot-fermented wines with more gentle tannins and more complex flavours.''
Complexity may offer another clue to Jane's feminine charm when it comes to making wine. ''I like to think of the wine as a stock,'' she says. ''It's as if I'm cooking up a big stock. Adding all the right ingredients, the best grapes, the purest fruit, to achieve the right balance and flavour to a wine, ''I always have a very clear idea of what I am trying to achieve.''

But Jane is quick to admit winemaking in Australia was not an obvious career choice. It has taken her a long time to learn the art. Educated at St Leonard's School for Young Ladies and then Glasgow Veterinary School, in her late 20s she decided to take a year off. ''I'd been in veterinary for four years and wanted to see Australia,'' she says.
''One night my friend and I drank too much champagne and dedicated our lives to food, wine and horses. I worked on the horse studs in Hunter Valley in Australia, then decided to try a vintage job at Rothbury after I met Len Evans.''

Len is a legendary figure in the world of wine. A Welshman and former publicist, he'd been the wine writer on Sydney's The Bulletin, before setting up the Rothbury estate in the 1960s. For Jane it offered the chance to learn how to make great wines in the Hunter
Valley, north of Sydney. Since the region is one of the driest on the driest inhabited continent, you can see the attraction for an Oban lass. Not long after starting work as a ''cellar rat'' at Rothbury there was another chance meeting - her future husband, and now winemaking partner, David. He was chief winemaker at Rothbury, and well-established master of Hunter Valley white wines.

Jane and David decided to set up together, with the couple agreeing to focus their efforts separately on whites and reds. Lowe Family Wines draws grapes from outstanding vineyards in the Hunter Valley and Mudgee and have planted their own vineyards at Tinja, the family farm, also at Mudgee, using unirrigated and untrellised vines. The wines they produce are excellent. Take my tasting notes from last year on their Merlot, 2000: ''Plummy, soft and juicy. The mouth feel is great, dry, firm and spicy. The finish is a wonder of damsons, cherries and bitterness.''

Pamela's rise to winemaking fame is no less surprising. When I asked what she did before discovering the trade she says: ''I was working on a medical research project that mainly concerned pus. After two years I jumped at the chance to work in whisky - they had much better samples to study. After a holiday in Barcelona I saw parallels between whisky and wine and I wanted to make wine.''

Although Spain, and latterly Chile, are where Pamela is best known, she got her break in Australia with Penfolds and then Seppelt, starting as a microbiologist, then graduating to winemaker. Pamela has also found that being a Scottish, rather than a female, winemaker has been more significant in a ''still fairly chauvinistic industry''. ''In Chile people presume I am French thanks to my strange Spanish accent. And a lot of French female winemakers go to Chile as the French industry is male-dominated,'' says Pamela. ''The fact that I am Scottish is the talking point, not the fact that I am a woman. Having cut my teeth in the male-dominated Scotch whisky industry helps. I don't often think about gender.''

Pamela is sure about the market she's selling to - in particular her homeland. La Pamelita is Pamela's sparkling red wine, which has become a cult among devotees. It has done very well in Scotland. ''In the last two years I have done a number of pre-Christmas tastings showing La Pamelita. Its ripe red spicy fruit, lovely soft mousse and full round palate seem to go well with the Scottish palate,'' says Pamela. ''You have to be in tune with what the consumer wants. I have just made a vibrant new range of Millaman wines. Red-hot wines from Chile we call them and I'm excited about how these will be received in Britain. ''The UK market is the best served in the world. It's not good enough just to have a good wine at a reasonable price. You have to get the label or concept right.''
Pamela isn't alone in achieving success in her former home market.
Jane is proud to highlight how well the wines have done in Scottish restaurants.

Not happy to go through existing import routes, Jane enlisted the help of her sister-in-law Amanda Wilson, based in Dunbartonshire. From there the wines have found eager drinkers in many restaurants, as well as a growing army of fans who buy direct from Strathardle Fine Wines.

In true feisty Scotswoman style, neither Jane nor Pamela are content to sit back and enjoy the fruits of their labour. Pamela is working on her 14th vintage. ''I'm in the process of starting up my own company, renting space in a winery 100k outside Barcelona. The long-term goal is to buy my own property. When I am making sparkling wine in the traditional manner I am as happy as anything.''

For Jane, the aim is to make ''an even better red wine''. ''I still haven't made that great red wine yet. I want to do that before I'm 50.''

I'll toast the pair of them.

- Lowe Family Wines can be bought from Strathardle Fine Wines. Tel: 01389 830 643.
- La Pamelita is available from Everywine.co.uk, Virginwines.co.uk and Peckham's priced at around (pounds) 11.50.