Stuti Gokhale
Directed by Stuart McDonald, ‘A Perfect Pairing’ is a heartwarming romantic comedy movie on Netflix. It centers around Lola, a successful wine company executive who leaves her job to start her own venture. Hoping to rope in renowned wine business owner Hazel Vaughn as a client, she travels to Australia.
There, Lola starts working as a ranch hand on the heiress’ sheep farm to earn her trust, but unexpectedly falls for the farm boss Max, who has secrets of his own. Given the authentic portrayal of farm life as well as how wineries function in the movie, the audience wonders if Vaughn Family Wines and the Waratah Station exist in real life too. How about we find out more together? SPOILERS AHEAD.
Is Vaughn Wines a Real Company?
Even though the audience may feel it is real, there is no such company named Vaughn Family Wines. In ‘A Perfect Pairing,’ Lola starts looking for potential wine businesses to add to her clientele and zeroes down upon Hazel Vaughn, who owns Vaugh Family Wines. It is a family-owned business started by her great-grandmother, Sybylla Vaughn, a hard-working widow who established the sheep farm and winery all by herself.
After Hazel’s mother’s death, she and her brother inherit the wine business, but he chooses to remain a silent partner in it and rather focuses on managing the sheep farm. Regardless, she works hard to make Vaughn Family Wines a known name in the domestic Australian market and starts attracting a lot of importers from worldwide, including Lola. Moreover, the company ensures quality by using organic and biodynamic raw materials, as well as unique manufacturing techniques.
For instance, the wines are stored using state-of-the-art climate control, which is a perfect balance of temperature and climate control. In addition, Vaugh Family Wines specializes in unique blends that both contrast and complement each other. All these processes are depicted quite elaborately in the movie when Lola visits the winery with Max and learns about how their premium wines are made.
Although Vaughn Family Wines is not a real company, it probably draws inspiration from several real-life family-owned wine companies in Australia, such as d’Arenberg, Tyrrell’s Wines, and De Bortoli Wines. Each company has a rich family heritage behind it, with numerous generations involved in wine production. It is rather likely that the makers of the movie have created Vaughn Family Wines from their observations of such interesting businesses.
Is Waratah Station a Real Sheep Farm?
Contrary to popular belief, Waratah Station is also not a real sheep farm. Although, there are several livestock farms in Waratah, Australia. Therefore, chances are that ‘A Perfect Pairing’ takes cues from how such farms function to create an authentic picture of ranch life on-screen. In the movie, when Lola first arrives at Hazel’s sheep farm Waratah Station, she is rather clueless about how to perform tasks efficiently. Just like a regular person who has never worked on a farm, she gets overwhelmed by seeing a completely different world in front of her.
Luckily, the other ranch hands and Max guide Lola through all the various areas of the farm and she gradually gets learns a lot about life as a jillaroo (female ranch hand in Australia). From scratch, she learns how to build wire fences to keep away kangaroos, how to store sheep feed and manage the animals’ meals and to create fertilizer from sheep manure.
Not just that, Lola also gets a first-hand experience of shearing the sheep for wool and maneuvering herds in the pastures. She further adjusts to her new lifestyle by wearing a jilleroo hat and Blunnies- boots that are specifically made for rough terrains in Australia. In addition, the movie realistically portrays farm communities, where everyone shares meals and resources while living together. With time, Lola becomes a part of the ranching community and starts enjoying her life in Waratah Station.
Furthermore, ‘A Perfect Pairing’ has been filmed authentically in lush green landscapes in Australia, thus giving the feeling of a real farm. Hence, we can reaffirm that even though Vaughn Family Wines and the Waratah Station are fictional places, they give the lifelike impression of an actual wine business and sheep farm.
Read More: Is A Perfect Pairing a True Story?
