21, August 2024
Meet Your Maker: Wes Pearson, Juxtaposed Wines
Juxtaposed Wines is dedicated to crafting wines that authentically reflect the vineyards where the grapes are grown. By sourcing from different sites across McLaren Vale, the wines highlight the unique characteristics of each location. Wes Pearson, owner and winemaker, has a winemaking philosophy that let’s the grapes speak for themselves, ensuring each wine is a true expression of its vineyard, best appreciated through side-by-side tastings of Juxtaposed Single Vineyard Wines.
We caught up with Wes to find out more:
How did you get started in the wine business?
As a young man I was living in a ski resort in Canada, and I needed to find a job that allowed me to work at night so my days were free to snowboard, so I got a job in a restaurant. After a few years of working in that industry I got the wine bug and started learning more and more, which eventually led me to completing a degree in wine biochemistry. After that, I was off and running.
What do you love about making wine in McLaren Vale?
There are a few things that make McLaren Vale such a great place to grow grapes and make wine: the climate, the proximity to the ocean, the geography, the ancient geology, the old vines. However, the thing that really defines McLaren Vale for me is the people, and the culture and community that they create. There is a real understanding among McLaren Vale grapegrowers and winemakers that ‘a high tide floats all boats’ and that breeds innovation and collaboration within the community, and leads to a really healthy camaraderie within the wine community here. You see it in our industry leading sustainability credentials, our exploration of alternative and emerging grape varieties, and our modern and progressive takes on the classic MV varieties. It’s very unique and exciting to be a part of and I’m grateful every day to live and work here. McLaren Vale really is a special place.
What is your favourite grape variety to work with and why?
The easy answer here is Grenache of course. The resource McLaren Vale has with some of the oldest Grenache vines on the planet is unmatched, and Grenache’s ability to really highlight the subtle detail of where it was grown is just so exciting to work with. However, this is also true with Shiraz, and over the past couple years I’ve really started to explore more of the really diverse sites that McLaren Vale has for producing unique, nuanced and delicious Shiraz, and so I’d say I’m pretty excited about Shiraz these days as well!
What are the most rewarding aspects of your work?
I really enjoy telling the stories of the vineyards where I source my grapes and the families that grow them. They have such a rich history that isn’t often passed down the line to the people that drink our wines so I like to be an advocate for them and their histories, as they really add an extra level of interest to our wines. And of course, to watch someone enjoy drinking something that you have made. That never gets old.
If you could open a bottle of wine and share it with one person, who would they be and what wine would you choose?
That’s a tough one - there are so many! Ok, so historical figures: Mandela, Ghandi and Einstein come to mind. Obama would be another one that would be a real good chat. But I’m going to go off the board and say the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. I’m a closet astrophysics geek and he’s one of the best science communicators there is. Would be great to pick his brain. And so what are we drinking? Stars and McLaren Vale together so I think in this context we’d have to drink an old vintage of Clarendon Hills Astralis wouldn’t we?
Find out more: juxtaposed.com.au