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Jules Taylor New Zealand Winemaker of the Year SOPHIE PREECE
“I am super chuffed and super proud. I love Marlborough and everything that goes on here.”
“WE’VE COME a very long way from standing around the builders’ block at the Spring Creek Playcentre,” says Jules Taylor, Gourmet Traveller Wine’s 2021 New Zealand Winemaker of the Year. The “we” is the founder of Jules Taylor Wines and her one-time carpentry companion Ben Glover, winner of the Gourmet Traveller Wine Leadership Award, some 45 years after they hung out at Playcentre. Come a long way indeed. “Jules is one of New Zealand’s modern pioneers,” said the judges in the awards. “She produces outstanding wine, is fiercely proud of her region, and mentors the up-and-coming breed of Kiwi winemakers.” That’s a “really nice recognition of all the bloody hard work that’s gone into this”, says Jules. “I am super chuffed and super proud, I love Marlborough and everything that goes on here, so that’s kind of cool too.” Back in those Playcentre days in the 1970s, grapes were beginning to flourish in Marlborough. And by 1990, when Jules left for a Bachelor of Science at Canterbury University, studying zoology and plant microbial science, vines were transforming the region. With her science degree and unabated curiosity in hand, she went on to Lincoln University, to study viticulture and winemaking. Jules initially planned to become a viticulturist, but was soon hooked by the metamorphosis of grapes to wine, along with the “craziness” of her first vintage in 1994. When she’d finished her studies, she worked hard to get a footing in Marlborough’s industry, becoming one of New Zealand’s few women winemakers, then setting off for vintages in Italy, spending nine years alternating vintages in Marlborough and Italy, including five harvests in Sicily. Jules and her husband George Elworthy launched their own label in 2001, with 400 cases of Jules Taylor Wines, and have spent the past 20 years growing the brand. It’s taken a lot of gumption, she admits. “It’s about believing in yourself and taking a punt. No one got anywhere without risking something.” That comes with plenty of sleepless nights. “We started with nothing – or less than nothing - so it’s been a long road. But I don’t think I would change anything.” 20 / Winepress March 2021
Jules Taylor The award is a delight, but she’s embarrassed to have beaten the other nominees, who are “so great and so innovative and cool, and doing really interesting things in this space”. And she repeatedly points out that the success of Jules Taylor Wines doesn’t come down to Jules Taylor alone. “It’s a big old team effort. There have been a lot of people along the way, helping out with all sorts of stuff.” Without good growers and the viticulture team and “the winemaking guys that babysit those bunches when they come in” she wouldn’t have great wines, she says. Jules has long been a proud champion of Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc and is making the same style as she was 10 years ago, “cause it’s not broke”, she says. “I mean sure, we are exploring other styles of the variety to make it more accessible for a wider audience – those people who hate the classic in-your-face style. They might enjoy that more textural and slightly more complex barrel ferment.” But plenty has changed over the past decade, with the couple buying their own vineyard and leasing another, while building partnerships with distributors and customers around the world. Relationships, says Jules, are key in whatever you’re doing, in any industry. And her commitment to the people, industry and region she works with have earned her a reputation for more than great wine, said the Gourmet Traveller Wine judges. “The respect and mana that Jules has in the New Zealand community is as much a reflection of the wines she makes as it is the contributions she is making to the country’s industry.” The award comes at the end of a “complicated” Covid year, and on the cusp of a “really low harvest,” Jules says. “It’s going to be really interesting what happens. We just have to work together with people. We will know at the end
