We present the discovery and preliminary characterization of a gravitationally lensed quasar with a source redshift $zs$ = 2.74 and image separation of 2.9 arcsec lensed by a foreground $zl$ = 0.40 elliptical galaxy. Since optical observations of gravitationally lensed quasars show the lens system as a superposition of multiple point sources and a foreground lensing galaxy, we have developed a morphology-independent multi-wavelength approach to the photometric selection of lensed quasar candidates based on Gaussian Mixture Models (GMM) supervised machine learning. Using this technique and $gi$ multicolour photometric observations from the Dark Energy Survey (DES), near-IR $JK$ photometry from the VISTA Hemisphere Survey (VHS) and WISE mid-IR photometry, we have identified a candidate system with two catalogue components with $iAB$ = 18.61 and $iAB$ = 20.44 comprising an elliptical galaxy and two blue point sources. Spectroscopic follow-up with NTT and the use of an archival AAT spectrum show that the point sources can be identified as a lensed quasar with an emission line redshift of $z$ = 2.739 ± 0.003 and a foreground early-type galaxy with $z$ = 0.400 ± 0.002. We model the system as a single isothermal ellipsoid and find the Einstein radius θE ∼ 1.47 arcsec, enclosed mass $M$enc ∼ 4 × 10$\mathrm{<mrow\; data-mjx-texclass="ORD">11</mrow>}$$M$⊙ and a time delay of ∼52 d. The relatively wide separation, month scale time delay duration and high redshift make this an ideal system for constraining the expansion rate beyond a redshift of 1.