WINNING WITH WINE
The women at the top of the judging game
Many of us love to wind down with a glass of some of New Zealand’s finest wines, but for Jane Cooper and Sarah-Kate
Dineen, it’s a way of life.
Jane (48) is winemaker at Ohau Wines on the Kapiti
Coast, a job she juggles with her role as mum to Vita (6) and Tommy (4). Sarah-Kate owns Maude vineyard in Wanaka with her husband Dan.
Neither woman imagined they’d end up in the viticulture business when they both left high-pressure careers to answer the call of the vines.
Now, the pair are regarded as leading New Zealand winemakers and are highly sought-after judges at wine awards around the country.
Their most recent mission is judging this year’s New World Wine Awards.
A now 25-year industry veteran, Jane, a law and political science graduate, got her first wine-related job as a cellar-hand at a Nelson vineyard.
Fortuitously, the winemaker left nine months later and
Jane stepped into the role.
She had stints in Chile, Australia’s Hunter Valley and Italy – “the Italian men were lovely but very sexist, to the point that they wouldn’t do any work on my wines until all of their wines had been done” – as well as Martinborough and Masterton. She now has her own label, Alexia, named after her maternal grandmother.
“When I started winemaking, there were very few women in the industry, but that has all changed. In terms of managing having children, my wife Lesley and I agreed that when we had kids, we both wanted to be home with them so we both went down to three days a week. I’d definitely encourage other young women to get into the industry.”
She laughs as she adds, “Having said that, for six weeks of the year, at vintage, my kids never see me.”
Winemaking was a more natural progression for SarahKate (42), despite an earlier attempt at a medical career.
Her parents Dawn and Terry Wilson own the Mount Maude estate in Wanaka.
She also started out overseas, ending in a 10-year stint in the Hunter Valley, where she met her winemaker husband Dan.
In 2005, the pair moved back to New Zealand and set up their own winery, Maude, alongside her parents’ vineyard. She reckons they were “a bit bloody mad. We went from being double income, no children to two kids [Stella
(9) and seven-year-old Mae] and no income.”
Her experience as a young winemaker/judge in Australia gave her an appreciation for future-proofing to ensure production wasn’t just based around short-lived trends.
“If you follow trends too tightly, you’ll trip yourself up. You only have to look at chardonnay. All we used to do was slam it with oak. Now we’re a lot lighter with our touch and chardonnay fruit is really getting some traction.”