WineNZ Summer 18-19 (1)
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feature | kevin judd<br />
A winemaker’s<br />
other life<br />
Paul Taggart talks to Kevin Judd about<br />
photography, Greywacke’s growing<br />
success and his time at Cloudy Bay<br />
Kevin Judd and dog Dixie.<br />
With the benefit of<br />
hindsight, some<br />
careers and even<br />
the growth of<br />
whole industries<br />
can seem almost<br />
pre-determined. But the reality is often much<br />
different. Even the whole Marlborough<br />
sauvignon blanc success was largely a<br />
surprise to most in the industry in the<br />
first decade or so. Some wineries were<br />
still happily planting Müller-Thurgau in<br />
Marlborough in the eighties, thinking its<br />
high cropping would produce good wine<br />
profits.<br />
And with careers, for every person who<br />
knows from the age of five they want to be<br />
a doctor or a firefighter, there are a dozen<br />
who fall into a career, or have it decided for<br />
them by circumstances out of their control.<br />
With Kevin Judd, he’s always had two<br />
strings to his bow, and has been pragmatic<br />
enough to allow the changing winds of both<br />
industries — wine and photography — to<br />
dictate his path in life.<br />
Kevin was born in England, but when he<br />
was nine his family emigrated to Australia,<br />
and he went to school in Adelaide.<br />
At high school he was good at science,<br />
but didn’t want to make paint or work in<br />
a factory. He visited a few wineries in<br />
the Barossa, and winemaking sounded<br />
like an interesting job, so he enrolled at<br />
Roseworthy.<br />
“I wasn’t sure I had made the right<br />
decision after the first year; I felt out of<br />
my depth. I wasn’t much of a wine drinker<br />
when I started,” he said.<br />
Fortunately he stuck with it, and after a<br />
two-year stint at Chateau Reynella, before it<br />
was bought by the Hardys group, he came to<br />
New Zealand and worked at Selaks Wines.<br />
Then David Hohnen came along, Cloudy<br />
Bay was established, and the rest is history.<br />
But in parallel with his winemaking<br />
life, Kevin has always been a passionate<br />
photographer. His father was an amateur<br />
snapper and had his own darkroom, which<br />
could have been where the passion came<br />
from.<br />
While at Cloudy Bay, Kevin did a fair<br />
amount of photography.<br />
A visit to Marlborough by UK-based<br />
professional photographer Mick Rock in<br />
<strong>19</strong>90 encouraged Kevin to take his hobby<br />
more seriously.<br />
A lot of his photographic work after that<br />
involved supplying quality stock images to<br />
Mick’s Cephas Picture Library in London,<br />
which has thousands of Kevin’s photographs<br />
on file.<br />
He also produced two books featuring<br />
his photographs, and provided illustrations<br />
for a number of other publications.<br />
This is where it gets interesting — and<br />
where serendipity and the evolving power<br />
and influence of the internet took control<br />
of Kevin’s future.<br />
When he walked out the door of Cloudy<br />
Bay for the last time, plans were already<br />
in place for Greywacke, but Kevin was<br />
“<br />
I wasn’t sure I<br />
had made the<br />
right decision<br />
after the first<br />
year; I felt out<br />
of my depth.<br />
I wasn’t much<br />
of a wine drinker<br />
when I started.”<br />
50 <strong>WineNZ</strong> Magazine | <strong>Summer</strong> 20<strong>18</strong>-<strong>19</strong>