Meet The Maker - Amber Duggan: Just a Glass Australia

By Rachel King
June 03, 2022

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At Daily Blooms we relish the opportunity to seek out the most luxurious and exciting Australian brands to enhance your gifting experience. Just A Glass Australia is the beloved supplier behind the unique (and delicious) wine twin pack featured in some of our most popular gift hampers.

We sat down with Just a Glass founder Amber Duggan to find out a little bit more about her business journey.

Just a Glass Australia provides a range of premium Australian made and owned vegan piccolo wines that are sustainably produced and bottled by solar power. Sometimes we enjoy savouring a glass of quality wine. Not a whole bottle. And often we’d like to enjoy a selection of premium wines, not just one grape variety. Just a Glass Australia was inspired by this very idea - producing premium local wines in single serve bottles. It’s an excitingly different drinking experience that lets wine lovers enjoy the labour of love that goes into producing local wines - one glass at a time.

Like the rest of the world 2020 was a year I could not have predicted, it rolled in like a tornado and turned my return from maternity leave plans on its head with a redundancy in a corporate career I had known for 15 years.

It was during the Melbourne lockdown that I kept thinking about Just a Glass as a brand. I had always thought about premium single-serve bottles of wine and couldn’t find what I was looking for on the shelf. In fact, the thought of opening a whole bottle of wine just to enjoy one glass felt like such a waste.

I was fortunate that I had a connection to the wine industry and had people whom I trusted. Having worked at a vineyard growing up I understood the passion and dedication that went into every bottle. I spoke with experts in the field and the more I spoke about it the more passionate I become and felt “if not me then who”.

Just a Glass wines are produced from grapes sourced within Victoria, from the east including the Yarra Valley through to the far north of King Valley and our newest region Heathcote. Each variety is carefully curated to select the very best wine which, is then bottled by solar power in the Otway’s of regional Victoria. We are so proud to be working with the very best growers and producers in Victoria to bring the Just a Glass brand to life.

As a brand it is really connected to celebrating Australian native fauna and flora. My family has long history in Australian farming near the Victorian Otway’s, therefore I was fortunate to have the opportunity to grow up in an environment that teaches you the meaning of caring for and working with the land. I always enjoyed seeing the labour of love that went into producing something, seeing the journey from paddock to plate. Or in my case now, paddock to glass. The story behind the artwork was really driven by this. Focusing on the beauty of Australian nature and celebrating the connection to the land. Working with Australian artist Kasey Rainbow was such a key part of building the brand. She really put her heart into capturing the essence of Just a Glass into a visual story. If you line up all seven Just a Glass piccolo bottles you can really see how that story unfolds from native bushfoods, through to soaring cockatoos. It’s a celebration of nature and one that we are so proud to display on each and every bottle.

We are passionate about supporting Australian made and will continue to focus on nurturing Australian produce and industry providing the very best this country has to offer in Australia wine making in a wine-by-the-glass experience.

I launched Just a Glass Australia only 18months ago as an entirely vegan friendly range, and within the first 8 months of launching we moved our entire bottling process over to renewable energy meaning that we could provide a product that allowed wine lovers to sip sustainably, being mindful in our footprint and consciously created.

As a brand we have always and will continue to celebrate all that is native Australian flora and fauna and over the past 6 months we have been secretly working on our #7 variety which is really the centrepiece of our Sip for Good initiative. We really wanted to provide wine lovers by the glass a premium Victorian wine that was decadent and delicious but also one that would do good with a focus on conservation and habitat restoration.

This variety has been a labour of love and a true passion project, one that we are so excited to finally be able to share. The artwork on the label of the Just a Glass Heathcote Shiraz by Kasey Rainbow features the Victorian bird emblem, which is at risk of being lost forever. The Helmeted Honeyeater is critically endangered. An estimated ~ 250 birds left in the wild. We have partnered with not-for-profit Friends of The Helmeted Honeyeater. Every bottle of Just a Glass Heathcote Shiraz sold will donate 5% of total sales revenue to support on-ground conservation projects.

This is a great question as I can think of so many incredible places I would love to return to across Europe, but I think if I was going to enjoy just a glass it would be only fitting to soak up the beauty of Australia and I would take the white beaches of the Whitsundays or the lush rainforest of the Otway’s any day.