“It was in a little bit of a state,” Melissa Bell, 41, remembers in regards to the first time she visited a 138-acre property close to the southwestern fringe of Australia, 186 miles south of Perth. That was in September 2020, 9 years after Bell left a job with Deloitte in London and moved the world over to work for a small, native agency known as Velrada.
The situation was superb: deep in what Bell calls “the meals basket of Australia,” the place 80% of the nation’s avocados are grown and 99% of the world’s Perigord black truffles are hunted (5 occasions what comes out of France), with the famed Margaret River wine area close by. Bell, wanting previous the property’s less-than-pristine aesthetic, noticed a approach to domesticate it into one thing higher.
Simply over a yr later, in December 2021, Bell—alongside together with her longtime good friend and enterprise accomplice Corrie Scheepers—reopened that property as Ampersand Estates, Western Australia’s newest vineyard and winery. Along with internet hosting occasions akin to weddings and conferences, the property provides lodging and, after all, libations. Friends can keep in a single day in three modern-farmhouse cottages overlooking the winery. The tasting room options an outside pergola overlooking a pond.
From humble beginnings
Though proudly owning this idyllic locale could appear like second nature to her now, Bell didn’t all the time have a simple time navigating an prosperous way of life. “The primary time I went on a enterprise journey, I needed to name my spouse and ask her how room service labored. Like, when the man got here, what did I do? Did I shake his hand with the cash in [my hand]? I simply didn’t know,” Bell says. “I had barely stayed in any inns, not to mention ordered room service.”
Bell spent the start of her childhood in a Biloxi, Mississippi, trailer park. After her father, a laborer who constructed greenhouses, suffered an accident and realized he might be only one accident away from with the ability to help his household, he enlisted within the army. This took the household to Germany and England. Between the ages of 5 and 18, Bell lived exterior of the U.S.
“My mother and father noticed that as a possibility for myself and my sister to expertise every part Europe needed to supply,” Bell says.
These travels have been removed from the luxurious vacation most individuals think about after they hear locations akin to Paris and Venice. Bell describes touring all throughout Europe in an outdated station wagon, sleeping in tents and residing on peanut butter sandwiches whereas touring Italy and Greece.
Nonetheless, similar to most individuals who get to see a little bit of the world, Bell emerged from these experiences extra fearless and ready for more adventures. “I do know what it’s prefer to stay with not very a lot [and to be] from a really humble background,” she says. “I’m keen to take dangers as a result of I’ve come from just about nothing.”
Carving her area of interest
At 23, Bell spent two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ukraine, the place she realized about vodka manufacturing from her host household, who distilled it from potatoes. She had simply graduated from the London College of Economics and Political Science with a Grasp of Science in worldwide relations and affairs in 2005.
Years later, when she arrived in Australia to work for that small, native agency known as Velrada, she met Scheepers, a South African native who grew up on a citrus and sugar cane farm. They left Velrada collectively to launch a consulting agency, The Terrace Initiative, in Perth in 2014. After increasing to places of work in Wellington and Auckland, New Zealand, in addition to Cape City, South Africa, they offered the agency in 2019.
“There’s this fantasy that owning a winery is sort of a dream,” Bell says. “And, after all, we’re doing it for enjoyable and fervour, but it surely’s a enterprise. It needs to be worthwhile. It’s not one thing that we simply endlessly do for enjoyable and sink money into.”
Founding Ampersand Estates
At Deloitte and Velrada, Bell felt she missed out on setting and reaching private targets. Being self-employed has allowed her to do this—however there are additionally drawbacks to being the one boss.
“The pleasure and the difficulty of being an entrepreneur… is that you simply’re wholly accountable for the form of your entire work,” she says. “The draw back of that’s that there’s no person else guilty if issues go improper.”
Coming into into a brand new trade was a danger, Bell acknowledges, but it surely paid off. She attributes their success with Ampersand Estates partly to her and Scheepers’ years of consulting expertise to attract on as they ventured into the opposite facet—they’ve been prepared and keen to roll up their sleeves and apply that data. However largely, Bell credit the truth that they by no means took their eyes off their dream of creating the most effective wine in Australia and taking steps to make that occur.
“One of many fundamentals of operating a enterprise is that you need to have an important staff,” Bell says. “It’s a must to have a compelling product market match, a compelling proposition in your buyer. We went out to search out the most effective winemaker in Western Australia,” she says, adopting that very same mantra for his or her resort supervisor and viticulturist. “It’s about discovering the correct staff who’s keen to go on a journey with you.”
Scaling with ardour: Rainfall Distillery
At present, Ampersand is transitioning to the place grapes are 90% estate-grown, giving the property additional management over the viticulture. Bell and Scheepers additionally launched Rainfall Distillery, which produces gins and vodkas on the identical website, sourcing components from the encompassing Southern Forests Area. They’re within the means of transitioning from standard electrical to solar energy.
“I’ve had a long-standing love of wine, however most likely extra significantly a ardour for vodkas and gins,” says Bell, who handles operations on the vineyard, distillery and agency, whereas Scheepers takes care of rising the enterprise, shaping new alternatives and pitching to new purchasers. “I spent 10 years telling Corrie [Scheepers] we must always make vodka. And he saved telling me, ‘Nicely, we personal a consulting agency.’ And so, once we not owned a consulting agency, I made a decision it was time to money in on a 10-year promise.”
In July 2023, Rainfall started distributing internationally to markets in Singapore and Southeast Asia, adopted by the U.S. Infused with one gin are Australian rain and Scarlet Bottlebrush; in one other, pinot noir and strawberries. The vodkas are infused with heirloom citrus, Australian rain and karri honey roasted macadamias. Rainfall can also be about to launch one of many world’s first single-estate gins, the place all of its components are sourced from the property, not simply the area.
“What Ampersand and Rainfall Distillery have given us is an excellent deeper expertise in how you can ship one thing huge and complicated,” Bell says. “There’s numerous people who find themselves nicely educated however have [not] truly had the true, sensible expertise of getting their very own pores and skin within the recreation round managing and funding and delivering a challenge.”
Ampersand Advisory: a full circle
Shortly after Ampersand Estates opened to the general public, in December 2021, Bell and Scheepers returned to their consulting roots and debuted a brand new boutique consulting agency, Ampersand Advisory, serving to boards and senior leaders ship huge, advanced initiatives with ambitions and values constructed round sustainability. What attracts purchasers to the agency is that Bell and Scheepers are operating a enterprise, too—a uncommon discover within the consulting enterprise.
Though it might have been potential, getting into into retirement after she and Scheepers offered their agency again in 2019 was by no means an possibility for Bell. “I shortly realized that retiring at 38 was not for me,” she laughs. “I’m 100% an entrepreneur at coronary heart.”
This text initially appeared within the Sept/Oct 2023 issue of SUCCESS magazine. Pictures courtesy of ©SHOT BY THOM/Courtesy of Ampersand Estates.