NZW Profile
Wine is in Charlotte Read’s blood TESSA NICHOLSON
THE NEW GM of Marketing for New Zealand Winegrowers can’t help but laugh at how she used to consider anything to do with grapes, “such a drag.” Little did she realise, that all that work she put into helping her parents on their Hawke’s Bay vineyard, would play a major role in her future. “It really is a small world,” Read says. “My Dad was keen for my sister and I to help out in the vineyard from an early age with the likes of ‘pulling out’ and it’s so funny that I used to think it was such a drag at the time. Little did I know that it was going to become my career.”
“We are a small country and if we focus our energies in a more direct way, the outcomes can be potentially greater. If you spread yourself thinly, without that focus, you compromise.” A double Science degree in Food Science and Nutrition, “because I thought we need to eat, so I will always have a job,” led to a placement for Read with Fonterra based in Singapore. The role was as a marketer on the South East Asia Graduate
Programme, despite the fact that she kept reminding the officials she was a scientist not a marketer. “ They were looking for technical people to do marketing, so I never got to wear a lab coat.”
It was the beginning of a career that has seen her spend the last 20 years living abroad, gaining experience not only with Fonterra, but also Villa Maria and NZTE. Initially it was four years in Singapore, marketing nutritional milk powders. When the offer came up to move to Dubai, Read declined, instead opting to head to the UK, Cambridge University in particular. “I realised that I was in the very fast paced commercial environment and I didn’t have the business training. So I went to England and did my MBA at Cambridge University. The
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NZ WINEGROWER DECEMBER 2019/JANUARY 2020
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