Helen Morrison - broadening horizons with Booster

It wasn’t so much a lightbulb moment as a beginning of seeing wine in a whole different light – as part of daily culture, a convivial way of bringing friends and family together, and something to be treated respectfully.

More than 20 years on, Helen has just joined Booster Wine Group as Chief Winemaker, after nine years as Senior Winemaker at Villa Maria in Marlborough. Booster Wine is part of a KiwiSaver fund and encompasses several brands, including Awatere River, Sileni, Waimea, Gravity Winery and Bannock Brae. For Helen, the new role is an opportunity to broaden her experience, with Booster’s winemaking interests spread across New Zealand. She’s also looking forward to having some strategic influence across the different brands under the group’s umbrella.

Helen grew up in Nelson, and had a loose association with the Seifried family, along with an awareness of Neudorf Vineyards. This offered a distant glimpse of the wine industry, but the concept of winemaking as a career path was yet to be discovered. “I was never that fond of school,” she recalls. “I just wanted to get out into the world.”

Backpacking trips were shoehorned around working on the trading floor at Credit Suisse, and – although novel for a twenty-something year old from Nelson on her OE – Helen made the observation that work didn’t seem to be bringing much joy to those around her at the bank.

Once her imagination had been captured by the possibilities of wine, she joined a wine tasting group, and a year working in Ireland came with regular attendance at a wine club. She singles out a tasting of M Chapoutier, at which the winemaker explained how his role was to observe and work with nature and respect the terroir – but also to be bold and not afraid to experiment. The urge to set out on her own winemaking journey was crystallising, and Helen returned to New Zealand to gain her Bachelor of Viticulture and Oenology at Lincoln University.

Her first job after qualifying was at Forrest Estate in Marlborough, which provided the invaluable experience of being hands-on wherever she was needed across the business. Then came the move to the much larger Indevin, with its focus on client winemaking; managing the complexities of differing winemaking styles and client requirements provided a fast-track learning experience. The move to Villa Maria in 2014 merged both of those experiences – Helen was back in a family-owned business, with all the passion and quality expectations that that brings, with the benefit of largescale efficiencies.

Helen talks about the maturing of the industry over this period, mentioning the increased tailoring of styles for different markets, along with sheer growth in scale, and notes that the industry has taken the time to understand site and soil complexities and optimal crop levels across the different varietals. She credits the increase in research and science-based practices – plus the collective sharing of this research – as transformative, and values the collegiality within the industry, believing this is a key contributor to its maturing process. “You can ring practically anyone and ask them about their practices... or arrange a wine swap to compare styles,” she says.

Helen feels particularly proud of the way the industry came together to get through the pandemic, remembering vividly the announcement of lockdown as the 2020 vintage was poised to begin. “I just thought – I don’t see how we can do this,” she says. Then overnight there appeared a village of campervans in the field next to the Villa Maria winery (nicknamed Coachella by the winery workers) to house the splitshift teams, and it became one of the more memorable vintages.

One of the things that Covid taught us is the need to pay more attention to the team’s wellbeing, she believes. “Vintage during lockdown threw a whole different light on how people cope in the workplace… are people doing okay, are they going to tell us if not, and what do they need from us as their team leaders?” A lasting takeaway for Helen from the Coachella days is that it was often small things that could make a real difference to everyone’s sense of wellbeing.

Helen welcomes Women in Wine NZ’s recently released industry pay gap report because publishing the survey gets the subject talked about. Her overall sense is that the wine industry probably reflects most others in gender distribution across the hierarchy. Although the report suggests the wine industry may be performing marginally better than others (with a pay gap of 7.8% rather than a general one of 9.1%), Helen would be keen for it to disclose the size of wineries that responded, as she suspects the data may be skewed by a relatively high number of women owner-operators within the industry. “Why not give the industry full disclosure?”

Helen believes women are not, in general, as confident at backing themselves and their worth, which often translates to being paid less than their male colleagues. She cites the number of over-subscribed pay negotiation workshops that were held as part of the Women in Wine NZ education series in Marlborough.

Networking, asking questions and setting up connections are key skills for younger women setting out in the industry, and Helen remains grateful to Belinda Jackson for mentoring her into the wine competition world. She still judges a few times a year and considers it invaluable for building self-confidence and networks.

Winemaking as a career has lots to offer women because they get to work with a great product, the job is far from monotonous, and it provides a chance to build global connections. “My partner thinks I just sit around drinking wine all day… but there is a bit more to it,” she laughs.