07-05-09

 

A WINE-MAKER from Bridge of Allan who started her own winery in Spain has been wowing experts with her creations.

Pamela Geddes has travelled the world making wine, first in Australia, then South America before setting up her own business, Lobban Wines, in Catalunya near Barcelona.

She was born in Aberdeen but moved to Bridge of Allan when she was two and went to Stirling High School.

Her first job came with a medical research firm before she ventured into the whisky industry.

 

But it was on a holiday to Barcelona that she first became interested in the wine making process and saw parallels between whisky and wine-making.

 

Her first product was a sparkling red called La Pamelita and she has followed it up with two others, the sparkling rose La Rosita and the straight red El Gordito.

 

Although Spain, and latterly Chile, are where Pamela is best known, her first break came in Australia with Penfolds.

 

But she has moved on to bigger things since then and has found that being a Scottish, rather than a female, wine-maker has had a big effect on her career in what Pamela describes as “still a fairly chauvinistic industry”.

 

She said: “In Chile people presume I am French thanks to my strange Spanish accent.

 

“And a lot of French female wine-makers go to Chile as the French industry is male-dominated. 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 whisky industry helps, as I don’t often think about gender.”

 

Last year Pamela won a top international award, beating 9,000 other entrants to take the silver medal at the International Wine Challenge with El Gordito.

 

The name translates as ‘the little fat one’ and is named after her brother Gordon.

 

Her wines have been a great success in both the UK and across the continent and Pamela continues to try and focus on the Scottish market.

 

She has a strong belief in how her wine should taste, she added: “Not for me these wishy-washy wines at 12 per cent.

 

“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.”

 

 Her wine is stocked in Clive Ramsay’s on Henderson Street, Bridge of Allan and is available in specialist wine stores all across Scotland.

 

She is back in Scotland next week in order to attend the Decanter Magazine World Wine Awards and is hoping for even more success.