Our Story

The Mewstone Story

Brothers Matthew and Jonathan Hughes established Mewstone vineyard on the banks of the D’Entrecasteaux Channel in 2011. We create expressive single site wines with a minimum of intervention in the winery. The vineyard is a former cherry orchard and with some new plantings going in this year will expanded to a final size of 5.2 hectares. The original planting consists mostly of pinot noir with small plantings of chardonnay, and riesling.

Jonny is the winemaker in this family venture. He studied winemaking in New Zealand before working in Langhorne Creek (South Australia), Central Otago (NZ), Mornington Peninsula (Victoria), Barolo (Italy), the Hunter Valley (New South Wales) and Okanagan Valley (Canada). Heading home to Tasmania, Jonny worked in various roles within the local wine industry, before settling in as the Assistant Winemaker at Moorilla in Hobart for seven years.

To keep Jonathan busy we also make wines under the hughes & hughes label. A venture that focuses more on winemaking. Sourcing quality grapes from other local vineyards, our hughes & hughes range allows Jonathan to be more daring with his winemaking endeavours and bring together techniques that he has encountered from his world travels. The most playful of this range is our lo-fi, living wines made without any sulphur adds. Producing in small amounts means he can put a whole lot of love into these unique creations.

Our Labels

Michael Schlitz is a printmaker living and working in the Huon Valley Tasmania. He creates images in a woodcut without a press. He has studied traditional and contemporary woodblock printing in Japan. Mewstone initially commissioned Michael to do some new woodblock works for both labels but after finding a selection of his old copper etchings we had a change of plan. Mostly from his “Book of Voyages”, the works are inspired by both the land and the sea.