Raising a glass to a new start in world of wine

Having spent 20 years in IT, a year out on a tall ship and sailing round Australia changed Jackie Sugden’s life forever and led to a new career in wine. Now back in Yorkshire Catherine Scott meets her.
Jackie Sugden  at the Grassington Wine Shop.Jackie Sugden  at the Grassington Wine Shop.
Jackie Sugden at the Grassington Wine Shop.

Walk into the tiny wine shop in Grassington and you might be surprised to be greeted by an Australian accent.

Jackie Sugden’s journey to the centre of Grassington has been a convoluted one, but the wine merchant feels like she has come home.

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“My parents were from Yorkshire but moved to Kent when I was little and that’s where I went to school,” explains Jackie.

“They moved back to Ilkley many years ago and all my aunts, uncles and cousins are up here and so it just made sence when I returned from Australia to come back to Yorkshire.”

Jackie decided to emigrate to Australia in 1989 after she fell in love with it during a year spent sailing on a tall ship with the First Fleet Re-Enactment voyage.

“I’ve always loved travel and I was visiting the Canaries when I met some people on the tall ship and they asked if I wanted to go with them to Rio. I was working in IT at the time and really fancied a change so I took a sabbatical from my job and joined them.”

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After reaching Rio she flew back to the UK but promised to travel to Australia to greet them when they arrived.

“I just fell in love with the place. I spent some time sailing around it and that’s when I decided I wanted to live there.”

Having spent 20 years in the international corporate IT world she managed to get a job with Westpac Banking in Sydney.

“I had changed the scenery but I was working in the same old soulless business.”

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So, after five years in banking she decided to take another sabbatical, this time for two years while she worked and studied in the Australian wine industry.

“When I was 16 and 17 a group of us travelled through France grape picking, One day I stayed on the tractor and saw the crushing process, it gave me some insight into the wine industry. But I was 17 and so didn’t think much about it. But when I was thinking what else I could do when I was in Australia it just seemed to make sense,” explains Jackie.

“There is no way that I would ever have been able to pursue it in Europe without sponsorship and knowing the right people, but in Australia it was so much easier and seemed to make business sense to me.”

Not content with just learning about it, Jackie wanted to get her hands dirty.

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While at Charles Sturt University in Wagga Wagga studying a BSc in Wine Science she met her husband. After spending a two-year apprenticeship as a winemaker at Bowen Estate, Coonawarra, together they realised a dream; to take on their own vineyard in 1998.

A 300 acre smallholding in the Bendigo region of Victoria, Nuggetty Vineyard is two hours north of Melbourne.

Alongside their 25 acre vineyard, Jackie and Greg ran “a mob” of 100 sheep, kept chickens, grew their own vegetables and fruit trees – apples, pears, plums, oranges, lemons and limes – and prepared the land for an olive grove.

Their home and livelihood were built on environmentally conscious principles, with solar passive construction and no mains water.

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Rain tanks collected water and the pair adopted a grey-water re-cycling system watering the gardens, while dams fed the vineyards with drip irrigation. Mains electricity was supplemented with solar electricity. With reduced use of herbicides, pesticides and chemicals they worked towards organic status.

A small producer, Nuggetty Vineyard made only 1,000 cases per year of premium wines from Semillon, Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz grapes.

The emphasis in production was on hand-made wines with hand-tended vines, hand harvested grapes and small open fermenters plunged by hand.

Despite the sheer hard graft, determination and love poured into Nuggetty Vineyard, nature can be very cruel.

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A severe eight-year long drought resulted in dust, deficiency, depression and ultimately divorce.

Jackie made the heart-breaking decision to return to the UK in 2007 and the property was sold in 2009.

“I just knew my Australian dream had come to an end. It was time to return home, but I didn’t want to return to Kent. I wanted to return to Yorkshire where my family was.”

She joined a local independent merchant, Martinez Wines.

There she flung herself into the business of wine buying, corporate events, tastings, appreciation courses, web sales, staff training and just about everything else.

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Five years on and in her mid-50s, a perfect opportunity arose.

When Jackie learned that an independent wine shop overlooking the picturesque cobbled square of Grassington was on the market she felt destiny calling again.

In October 2012, keys in hand, baggage neatly bundled, bursting with a new lease of energy and enthusiasm, Jackie Sugden landed in Grassington, 
where she had spent many happy childhood days exploring the Yorkshire Dales.

“I am passionate about small producers,” she says.

“They don’t necessarily need to be expensive, I have tasted every wine in the shop and I know they are good. They may not be your taste, but that’s where my knowledge come in.”

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She now literally lives 
above the shop and holds regular wine tastings in a bid to pass on some the knowledge she has learnt over the years.

“When I left Australia I never thought I’d have my own shop.

“But sometimes that’s just how it works out.”