The Interview - Jules Taylor

Head Girl at Marlborough Girls', flying Italophile wine maker, and now mother of two Jules talks juggling work/life commitments | By Beverley Doole | Photography by Jim Tannock


Winemaker Jules Taylor pulls up outside her house right on time at 9am. The school run is over and the lime birthday cake that she baked the night before has been dropped off at school along with her eldest son Louis, who turns six today.

Home for Jules, husband George Elworthy, Louis, and four-year-old Nico is a spacious bungalow surrounded by established trees in central Blenheim. There are more signs of the birthday inside. Jules sweeps the contents of a new box of Lego to the end of the table, reserving one of the plastic pieces to fiddle with throughout our interview. She also whips away the towel on the back of my chair: “I use it to turn the table into an ironing board. I’m not very domestic.”

That’s debatable – it’s probably more a matter of not having time. Work is never far away – a walk to the end of the garden and through the fence to the house next door takes her to the headquarters for Jules Taylor Wines, the label she launched with George back in 2001. And up until a year ago she also had her ‘day job’ as group senior winemaker, a rising star in global wine group Constellation.

It was a big juggling act. “There was a lot of responsibility. My job was to oversee winemaking at Constellation’s four wineries in Marlborough, Hawke’s Bay, and Auckland – that involved about 30,000 tonnes of fruit. It gave me an insight into winemaking on a large, corporate scale. I also got to see fruit from all over the country – the blending possibilities were fantastic and I learnt a lot. But it meant long hours and not seeing enough of my family.

“George was hugely supportive. He was the house-husband as well as working on developing the Jules Taylor brand. But I was missing out. If the kids cried they’d run to George. That’s not meant to happen to a mamma! When Louis was four he said ‘Mamma you used to pick me up from Montessori every day and now you never do.’ I left Constellation in September last year to focus on my wine and my family.”

Jules says life is more balanced now and she likes being her own boss. “I do the winemaking and George does the numbers. Our boundaries are very clear,” she says in a tone that is not debatable.

She also has time to bake a cake or watch the school cross-country without having to juggle work and “feel bad all the time. I had too many balls up in the air and was snapping at George about the dirty washing. Something had to give.”

Jules, 37, grew up with the Marlborough wine industry. She was born in Spring Creek just a couple of years before the first vineyards went in on the Wairau Plain. Her father Digger is a truck driver and her mother Lorri works at the Marlborough Express.

“Marlborough was very different then – there were cherry trees, apricots, apple orchards, and arable farming. Now it’s all grapes … it’s a monoculture.” There’s a hint of apology in her voice.

Jules went to Spring Creek School, Bohally Intermediate, and Marlborough Girls’ College where she was head girl. In the first of several attempts to play down her achievements, Jules says it wasn’t such a big deal. “It was an organiser sort of role. I did things that the teachers didn’t have time to do.

“As far as academic work goes I was hopeless at English, I just didn’t get it. I scraped through with just over 50% for School Cert. I was much better at the sciences and took physics, chemistry, and biology. I felt the pressure to perform – the school kept saying ‘we’ve never had a head girl who didn’t pass bursary’. I did pass, and seeing as my friends were going to university, I went too.”

Her approach to university was good preparation for winemaking, especially the mad weeks of vintage (grape harvest) every autumn. “I was a real last-minute sort of student. I procrastinated all the time then was up all hours before an exam. I need deadlines, I like that pressure-cooker feeling.”

She says she didn’t have a blinding ambition to become a winemaker – “it just sort of happened”. Every time she came home for the holidays there were more grapevines planted across the plains. Jules found vineyard work doing the summer jobs – lifting wires, bud rubbing, and leaf plucking – and although she had no plans at that stage to become a winemaker, the experience has proved valuable.

After graduating with a BSc she decided to build on her holiday experiences in the vineyards and enrolled in the post-graduate winemaking and viticulture course at Lincoln. At the end of the year, armed with her bit of paper and faced with repaying her student loan, she moved back in with her parents. She found work at the Wairau River wine shop for the summer and this was just across the road from Vintech where John Belsham was the winemaker. Jules wanted to work a vintage so she nagged him. And nagged. And nagged. Eventually he said “oh all right”.

The going was tough. “We’d work ridiculously long hours; it felt like I was always cold and wet. I’d burst into tears from the stress and pressure and being so tired. But the people were really supportive and encouraging and it was exciting being in the winery – I still get a buzz from the smell of the first ferment at the beginning of harvest every year.”

Jules was hooked. After the 1995 harvest – a rain-sodden nightmare – she spread her wings and flew to Italy with Vintech winemaker Matt Thomson (now chief winemaker at Saint Clair) for her first of eight vintages in Piedmont and Sicily. “Italy was a blast – the food, the countryside, the people, the shops. The wine wasn’t always that brilliant but I learnt about different varieties and winemaking on a smaller scale. Sicily is the most fabulous place on Earth.”

When it was winter in Italy Jules headed south to work in Australia and at Cloudy Bay before taking a permanent job at Marlborough Valley Cellars in 2000 making wine for Kim Crawford, Saint Clair, and Cape Campbell. Her mentors – Thomson, Crawford, and Simon Waghorn – encouraged Jules to launch her own label in 2001. This was her chance to develop her own style of wine. Her first 400 cases, Pinot Gris and Riesling, were hand-picked, single vineyard wines that showcased her talent for capturing intense fruit flavour and texture.

“We started with 400 cases because we figured if we couldn’t sell them we’d have enough friends and family to drink it.” As it turned out, she sold it all. Eight years on and she’s producing 18,000 cases with Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Rosé added to the JTW range.

Jules says winemaking suits her personality. “You need to be precise and practical. It’s like baking – if you forget to add the eggs, the cake is just not going to be that great. With wine you need to pay attention to get it to taste really good.”

At the other end of the scale there are times when the practical approach is required. “There’s a lot of rubbish talked about wine. The process is basic chemistry … you start with the fruit, get the juice, add yeast (or not, if it’s a wild ferment), and you get alcohol and carbon dioxide.”

It’s pretty obvious that Jules has a talent for ‘basic chemistry’. Her 2007 Sauvignon Blanc won the champion Sauvignon Blanc trophy at the Air New Zealand wine awards and that, combined with changing her distributor, kick-started the growth of the business.

“I love making Sauvignon Blanc – every site is different, every year is different. I love turning those berries into something you can pour from a bottle, something that smells good, tastes good, and adds to occasions with friends.”

This down-to-earth approach applies to Jules too, who is bemused by the photo shoot for WildTomato. “They plastered all this make-up on me! Usually it’s just a bit of mascara and powder if I’m lucky.” She has an energy and exuberance that needs no enhancement. Her cropped brown hair frames a radiant face (which could be the result of week five on a detox diet). And then there’s the fitness regime.

“I’m never going to be a waif. I like my food and wine too much so I have to work at it.” As someone who does nothing by halves, Jules’ idea of exercise includes competing in a gruelling cycle race around Lake Taupo or running a half marathon. “I have to sign up, pay my money, and tell someone I am going to do it, otherwise I keep putting it off. It’s the deadline thing again.”

And to maximise her time, she turns a training session or Pilates class into a social gathering. “Everyone is so busy it’s a way to get together with friends rather than just say ‘we must catch up’. But as well as keeping fit, it’s time out for myself, getting some free head space.”
 
The training also gets her out into the Marlborough landscape, which has a beauty that she appreciates more now than when she was growing up. “I love the Wither Hills – especially when the sun is setting and the light is soft, casting shadows. And then there’s the contrast of the Richmond Range on the other side of the valley. The hills give me my bearings.”

Marlborough is a good fit for Jules and her family. She and George both grew up as country kids and they want their boys to have the same experiences – they go eeling with Jules’ dad, sleep out in their hut, climb trees, and go for bike rides along the Taylor River.

Having the extended family support is important – it would be hard to keep the show on the road without it. During vintage George’s mother Sue moves in. “I’m working 12-16 hours a day,” says Jules, “and George is also a consultant winemaker, so he can be called out in the middle of the night too. We can’t just leave the kids alone!”

The flip-side of being back in her home town is there’s less choice for shopping and eating, and a lack of anonymity. “Everyone knows everyone and what they’re doing. If I don’t feel like talking, I have to pick my times to go to the supermarket. Eight pm on Tuesday is good. Ten am on Saturday is bad.”

Jules travels a lot to promote her label but there’s not much time for anything but work when she’s on the road. She is looking forward to the day when she can go away just for a holiday. Her dream destination would be to take the family to Sicily. That may require a Lotto win, but in the meantime her love affair with Italy is plain to see. Her homepage features Jules on a pale blue Vespa and two captivated Italians (“the one on the bike is Giancarlo, I’ve forgotten the name of the other guy”). She has a Vespa in the garage too, alongside the family’s Fiat 500 Bambina.

“I love the Fiat; although it’s small it still has room for two kids and the groceries. It’s very cheap to run and easy to park and it keeps down our carbon footprint.”

Like their car, Jules Taylor Wines is small. “We have always concentrated on quality and selling direct to restaurants and wine stores. I don’t want to see our wine on special in the end-of-aisle dump bins at the supermarket.

“With the over-supply of grapes, the industry is going through testing times. Marlborough has to protect its reputation for quality wine and sell it at a price point where everyone makes a dollar. I certainly want to keep making good wine, and as long as we can keep the boys clothed and fed and have a bit of fun along the way, then I’ll be happy.”