...To Make It As a Woman In The World of Wine...with Cloudy Bay's Kat Mason
Kat Mason is the Wine Communications Manager for Cloudy Bay - probably the best job title ever. She promises it's not all glamorous but when she describes sipping something chilled and sparkling whilst in helicopter passing over glaciers you can't help but feel she might be lying a bit. She's an old friend of mine from university and her passion for grapes was borne there when she saw an opportunity to get a free ticket to the best party of the year (and the most expensive) St John's College May Ball by being the drinks' officer for the event. From that first tasting she was hooked and the business has taken her from the leafy subarbs of Essex to the dramatic landscapes of New Zealand where she now lives with her daughter and boyfriend. In this episode we talk about the rise of women in the wine business, a notoriously closed gentlemen's club in the past; the debate around natural wine and her recommendations for delicious tipples for Summer. More about Kat: After university she decided she wanted to work in wine. She went to London to work and put myself through my initial wine exams but was made redundant and ended up living back at home in Essex and working for a local company there. That ended up being the best decision she had ever made because her time at Lay & Wheeler Wines was a grounding in all aspects of the business. She won a scholarship to travel to Marlborough in New Zealand and over the course of three weeks fell in love with the region and the industry. A year later she moved her husband, daughter and life to New Zealand to work for the Seresin Estate founded by Michael Seresin, a Director of Photography who's work includes Bugsy Malone, Midnight Express, Harry Potter - The Prisoner of Azkaban and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes who is a passionate advocate of organic, natural, biodynamic wines. In September 2017 she joined Cloudy Bay.