JON
We visited two Gusbourne team members, Jon and Laura, to hear about the paths they have taken to their current roles. Jon Pollard’s story takes us out of the ground into the bottle. Laura Rhys’ story takes us into the bottle and out of the glass.
What led you from a high school to farming in vineyards?
Jon. My Father had been in farm management and agricultural sales. From there, he moved into agricultural education quite often as a farm manager with a course of students to teach about certain aspects of that role. So, I grew up in an agricultural college and its farm.
My Mother came from a family of dairy farmers in Lancashire. I’ve always felt my happiest being outdoors. So, every Saturday morning when I was young, I’d be in the Land Rover with my Dad as he did the rounds so that he could see the farm. Dad did that job until he retired when I was at university.
At school, I was interested in Biology, Geography, and subjects that link back to the ground and the outside world. I did well in my GCSEs. But by the time I was doing my A-levels, I started enjoying going out too much. I did enough work to get me into uni.
I did a general agricultural degree at Aberdeen University. Thinking back, an indicator that I’d never become a winemaker is that I struggled with a Chemistry module. I switched degrees from the Biological Sciences of Agriculture to a Land Degree, which meant I didn’t have to sit a Chemistry exam for the fourth time.
I didn’t know what I wanted to do as I finished uni. I was relatively immature at the age of 22. So, I went travelling; I went to New Zealand with my girlfriend Tara, now my Wife. I probably had every opportunity sitting in front of me to work in vineyards, but I didn’t. I sampled plenty of New Zealand wine, enjoyed fruit picking, worked at a ski resort, and had all those sorts of casual jobs.
When we returned to the UK, Tara got a job working for a travel company down in London, so we moved, and I started looking for work. I found work with Majestic Wines. It was really good fun from a social point of view and the start of my wine education. I did that for two years until I felt I wanted to start using my agricultural background and thought I could link it with what I’d learned about wine. I was pretty interested in getting into the production side of things.
I started by sending letters with my CV to all the big names back then, but that didn’t get very far. But then I learned about a course at Plumpton College, an Agricultural College between Lewes and Brighton. So, I studied an HND there for two years. Interestingly, my Dad had previously been the principal there, and I had lived in a house at Plumpton College, which had come with my Dad’s job between 1980 and 1984.
When I finished the course, I knew I’d be more interested in the vineyard side of things than the winery. Then I saw an advert for the Gusbourne job. Andrew Weeber is the chap who started Gusbourne. I never heard how many people Andrew interviewed for this job, but I might have been the only one. So, I became Gusbourne’s first employee.
Andrew Weeber was an orthopaedic surgeon who moved with his family from South Africa in the early 1990s. He had worked in North Yorkshire, and his Stepdaughter lived here in Appledore, in the old Gusbourne farmhouse. She let Andrew know about the agricultural land coming up for sale. He thought it’d be a good idea to buy 200 hectares and turn some of it into a vineyard, which he did. He put an advert out looking for someone to run it, and I started here in May 2004, and I’ve been here ever since.
Ellie Furnival at Gusbourne
Do you remember what the advert said, and did Andrew and you have a plan on day one?
Jon. No job description came with the advert other than Gusbourne Estate is looking for a Vineyard Manager. Andrew is an affable chap with a sharp mind and a real people person. So, that interview was just a chat and a cup of tea. I didn’t know if there was a job description at that point.
I helped Andrew plant the vineyards but still had to finish college; then, I started full-time at the end of June. I remember coming into the first field we planted and standing in the middle of that six-hectare field; I looked at all the plastic grow tubes on the vines and thought, what do I do now? So,
I did a lot of walking around the vineyard, checking things were growing and teaching myself that way.
There were a few heated discussions that Andrew would generally win because it was his money invested in the vineyard. But there was also the thrill of shared discovery we both went through as we learned how to do things. By the time we started producing fruit, we had started getting to know other people in the industry and had become part of that community around the vineyards in the UK. Plus, I had the grounding from my education and time working on farms. But all the time, I was learning better and more efficient working methods. Like Andrew would say to me, once you know it all, you’ll be dead. Every day’s a school day, I suppose.
“In the early years working here, I could walk the dog wherever I wanted; the vineyards were very much like the extension of my garden. I’d bring my family in for a walk through the vines on a weekend.”
Part of the reason I’ve been at Gusbourne so long is that if I ever considered leaving, and that’s only really entered my mind a handful of times, something interesting has always changed my mind. In my time here, Gusbourne has continued to change and develop, with the winery being put in, more vineyards being planted, our tasting room, The Nest, and our team growing. We added a marketing department; those sorts of things bring more skill into the business and keep things interesting. Plus, I’m a creature of habit, and I like working at Gusbourne.
As we grew from this small entity to a larger one, we didn’t have the space on this site to house all the different operations. So, rather than just being on one site in Appledore, which we were up until 2013, we’ve also got the vineyards over in Sussex, plus our secondary production facility up near Maidstone. So, we are spreading out. It’s a shame we aren’t together all of the time as a team. That’s a symptom of growing from a 6-hectare vineyard started by one chap to a 90-hectare business. But we get together for summer and Christmas parties, which is great fun.
Jonjo Hooper and Ellie Furnival at Gusbourne
How do you feel in the build-up to harvest?
Jon. In a way, the harvest begins in the wintertime at pruning. So, once all the leaves have dropped in autumn, we’ll start thinking about how to prune the vines. We generally prune the vines the same every year, but the decisions we make then can influence what comes at harvest time.
Pruning is the most critical job in the vineyard for not only maintaining the architecture of your vines so that they grow in the right way, but it’s the first opportunity you have to set the yield for the next vintage. It depends on how many shoots or buds you leave on the vine. I wouldn’t say the anticipation of harvest quite starts then, but there’s an appreciation that it’s an important job.
Once we have bud burst in March-April, we have frost risk, which is always a fun period. We have a frost alarm that will wake me up in the middle of the night if it’s getting cold. Then, we go out into the vineyard and start the frost fans that help mitigate against the frost and reduce the potential loss of any growing tissue. Hearing that ringtone, even out of context, increases my heart rate.
The next milestone is when the flowers emerge; we get an idea of the yield. And we’ll have a first stab at estimating harvest at that point. But things can go wrong between then and harvest, with the weather or disease. Usually, from June onwards, we’ll start advertising for workers for the harvest. Harvest is roughly 12 days of work over three weeks. The anticipation begins to build when we know we’ve got a good number of pickers because we need the pickers to bring the crop in at the right time.
But it’s the lead-up to harvest where I’ll get a bit nervous, especially if it’s a later harvest because the weather can get worse quickly and make everything more complex. Doing the harvest is quite a buzz; it’s a highlight of the year. You’ve got nearly a hundred people on this site harvesting fruit when we are picking. Most of them are local and like to return every year.
“Quality trumps everything. We want a great crop, and everybody here at Gusbourne, including myself, is aligned to produce the best quality from what the weather, soil, and land give us. Anything less would be a compromise, and I wouldn’t be comfortable in that situation if I knew we could achieve more.”
“People often drink our sparkling wines at celebrations, so it’s nice to think I’ve played a part in that.”
Jon Pollard
Chief Vineyard Manager
Gusbourne Estate, Kenardington Road, Appledore, Ashford, TN26 2BE