The People
Women In Wine Taylor-made for Marlborough wine WORDS: SOPHIE PREECE
Photos: Lisa Duncan
JULES TAYLOR is still smitten with Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc, more than 25 years after she smelled her first ferment. “I think we are so lucky to have a wine that took our country to the world,” says the founder of Jules Taylor Wines. “I love its vibrancy and everything about it. I love tasting those berries during vintage, and imagining how great they will taste in the glass.” When Jules launched her eponymous label in 2001, with begged grapes, borrowed winery and 400 cases of wine, she was moonlighting for the fun of it. “I never imagined this would feed my (then) nonexistent family and I certainly didn’t think I could ever give up my real job,” she says. But 19 years on, Jules Taylor Wines is a household name in markets around the world, and a full-
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time gig that certainly keeps her family fed, though occasionally called on to bud rub for their supper. Jules grew up in Marlborough, surrounded by a wine industry that was growing up too. By the time she left to do a Bachelor of Science at Canterbury University, vineyard expansions were cranking and the world had a taste for Malborough Sauvignon Blanc. Jules was also getting a taste for it, while studying plant and microbial science and zoology, satisfying a penchant for bugs, growing things and cutting things up. “I still love all those things and looking at all different sorts of ecosystems and how change influences them.” In 1993, with a degree in hand, she vetoed thoughts of doing her Masters, and instead went to Lincoln University to
NZ WINEGROWER APRIL/MAY 2020
study wine. Her plan was to work in viticulture, but it took a single vintage to become “mesmerised” by winemaking, and the ability to turn a raw material into something completely different, “with a whole new shape and form”. She was also immediately attracted to the “craziness and stress and excitement and camaraderie of vintage”, she says, on the cusp of another harvest. “I still get excited by it.” With her wine studies completed, Jules worked in vineyards and at the Wairau River Wines cellar door, but spent plenty of time across the road at the new Vintech winery led by winemaker John Belsham. “I just hounded him really,” says Jules. “Like in any industry, getting your first job is the hardest. In the end I just said, ‘I need a chance’.” John gave it
to her (for which she remains thankful) while warning of the relentless nature of the work, and Jules threw herself at a dauntingly steep learning curve. “It was awesome, but tough,” she says, admitting to doubts halfway through vintage. “I found it really stressful.” She stayed the course and conquered the curve, but after 18 months decided it was time to see more of the wine world. Jules set off for northern Italy, launching a lifelong “love affair with all things Italian”. Nine Italian vintages followed, including five in Sicily, interspersed with Marlborough harvests. In the 1997 Marlborough vintage, she was working at Cloudy Bay, just down the road from Allan Scott vintage worker George Elworthy - these days father to their two boys