Lisa McGuigan is the fourth generation of one of the Hunter Valley’s most famous winemaking families.

While born into a wine family, Lisa made a career in hospitality before turning her attention to wine. For 10 years, Lisa worked in hotel management and restaurants across Australia, trained as a chef and in hotel management. During this time, she garnered an international perspective on hospitality which characterised her career.

In 1992, Lisa’s father, Brian McGuigan, established McGuigan Wines, and Lisa started an informal involvement in the company. In 1996, she moved back to the Hunter Valley from her position as Restaurant Manager at Sydney’s Renaissance Hotel to establish Hunter Cellars, a new take on the traditional cellar door which raised the bar in the Hunter Valley. It offered visitors sleek service, and so much more than just wine tastings. Wines from various small Hunter producers were available to taste and buy, a program of chef events was run and rare wines from Australia’s most revered producers collected and made available for sale.

At this time, Lisa was appointed to the McGuigan Wines Board of Directors, and helped guide the company through crucial growth phases.

But developing Hunter Cellars and working with her father did not satisfy the ambitions of Lisa McGuigan. Through her hospitality background, she identified a niche in the market for a well-designed, boutique brand. She now wanted to develop her own label.

Hermitage Road was born in 1997, named after the Pokolbin Road that runs past several McGuigan vineyards, and where Brian and Fay McGuigan now live. McGuigan Wines was firmly Brian’s focus, and Hermitage Road was started by Lisa from scratch with limited resource from the family company. She hired a corner of the McGuigan winery,
and contracted winemaking. She designed the labels, and sold the wine from her makeshift office in the garage at her Sydney home.

The brand grew through her special brand of marketing – personal and very hands on. In 1998, as Hermitage Road was making inroads in the on-premise market in Sydney, the French appellation mounted a campaign to prevent the use of the name “Hermitage”. The new brand hit its first obstacle, but undeterred, Lisa found a new name – Tempus Two (Latin for ‘second time’). Still working from her garage, Lisa and a team of three people built the brand from a standing start of 6000 cases to production of 50000 cases.