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Lifetime Achievement James Healy’s mark on Marlborough wine SOPHIE PREECE
“THE MARLBOROUGH wine industry has been extremely kind to me,” says James Healy, 32 years after he pulled up in an iridescent green Holden Premier packed with his family and belongings. James had cut his oenological teeth with Corbans in Auckland and Gisborne, but found his people and place at Cloudy Bay when he started there in 1991. Experimentation was embraced, the work was “vital and free”, and his colleagues – including viticulturist Ivan Sutherland and winemaker Kevin Judd – were kindred spirits in crafting wines. “It was just a perfect bunch of people together,” says James, who was awarded a Wine Marlborough Lifetime Achievement Award in November, for his extraordinary contribution to the region’s wine industry. “If you had an idea, you just tried it out on a few barrels. You just did it. Which fits completely with how I feel. As soon as you start getting to, ‘we’ve always done it like that’, I feel like shooting myself.” Unconfined by convention, they were audacious with oak, adventurous with wild ferments, and watched ugly ducklings transform to swans, given sufficient time. “The three of us would taste the wine and then extend the idea. Not everything might work, but a lot of them worked extremely well,” James says, noting outcomes like the iconic barrel-fermented Cloudy Bay Te Koko Sauvignon Blanc. Ivan and James took that hands-on, hearts-in, habitsout philosophy when they and their wives – Margaret and Wendy respectively – launched Dog Point Vineyards in 2004, with a Sauvignon Blanc and three barrel fermented wines – Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and the Section 94 Sauvignon Blanc – all made with natural yeasts. When the time came to share those wines, the Holden Premier took to the road again, with Ivan and James touring the length and breadth of the country, wide white boxes of wine strapped to the slim roofline of the striking car, its doors now adorned with the tī kōuka (cabbage tree) of Dog Point Vineyards. It’s a work life he’s loved, but not the one James anticipated when he went to Otago University to study biochemistry, considering wine to be cheap alcohol. As he progressed in his degree, James was influenced by a genetics professor who was passionate about wine. “Once you got to about third year in the biochemistry department he looked around and spotted people he thought might have an interest in wine,” says James, who was invited to tastings of special wines – mostly from France, occasionally from Germany – that transformed his view and shifted his plans.
18 / Winepress January 2024
“I wrote letters to every single winery I could find in the yellow pages.” James Healy On completing his postgraduate studies, James and Wendy moved to Auckland, where he set about getting a job. “I wrote letters to every single winery I could find in the yellow pages… I got a letter back from Joe Babich, and one from Peter Hubscher, and one from George Fistonich. And then I got offered a job at Corbans.” He started in the cellar and after a couple of years moved up to quality control manager. James was exposed to Marlborough fruit from 1983, when Corbans began to truck their grapes to the Gisborne winery, and found flavours of the subsequent wines astounding. “I couldn’t believe that a grape could make such a massive difference. In 1990 James “struck at the right time” when he asked Kevin, Cloudy Bay’s founding winemaker, if there were any jobs to be had and received an offer to join. “We just packed everything up and moved down.” More than three decades on, James has made an indelible mark on the region, through extraordinary wines, knowledge-sharing events, and the mentoring of winemakers. In 2018 he became a founding member of Appellation Marlborough Wine (AMW), which offers a
