Women in Wine: Ashleigh Barrowman’s Path to Siren
When Ashleigh Barrowman landed in Marlborough a decade ago, she was convinced the wine tanks that dotted the landscape were hiding dairy secrets.
Which is to say, Lauren doesn’t take herself too seriously. “I just want to make wines that make me smile as I drink them,” she says. “Someone once described Swift as ‘serious wines for not-so-serious people’ – and we reckon that’s about bang on.”
The ‘we’ refers to Lauren’s husband and business partner, Henry Williams. Together they juggle Swift Wines, the aforementioned canine cluster (Florentine, Marceline and Pipi) and two young sons (Finn and Louis) from their home in Hawke’s Bay.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Having spent the school holidays of her youth working on Marlborough vineyards, Lauren took off to Europe for a gap year and came back with one strong conviction: “I returned with no plans but I knew I hated working in vineyards.”
Fate laughed at that resistance and delivered her a job at Clos Henri Vineyard in Marlborough. “I just needed to earn money,” says Lauren. She ended up with far more than a paid-off credit card. “They actually took the time at Clos Henri to educate us around our work and how it improved the end result – so I just really got into it all.”
From there, Lauren’s wine ascent was, well, swift. She moved to Hawke’s Bay in 2009 and racked up a Bachelor of Wine Science and Diploma of Wine Marketing at the Eastern Institute of Technology. After graduation she was snapped up by Ash Ridge Winery as their assistant winemaker and promoted to chief winemaker soon thereafter. Two years later she was crowned New Zealand’s inaugural Young Winemaker of the Year in 2015. She was just 25 at the time.
This back-pat was the perfect validation for someone swimming in a bit of bogstandard self-doubt. “It gave me the confidence that I was on the right track.” After several vintages in California and the Rhône Valley, she launched her own label in 2016: Swift Wines. It began as an excuse to experiment with one of her favourite grapes – Syrah – around the edges of her full-time winemaking gig. But when Ash Ridge was sold in 2021, Lauren was both suddenly unemployed and three months pregnant with her first child. She chose to use her redundancy money to start growing her Swift wine family alongside her Swift human one.
Five years (and two sons) on, that solitary Syrah has many wine siblings: Albariño (still and sparkling), Chardonnay, Lumière Red, Rosé, Gamay Noir, Cabernet Franc and a Late Harvest Riesling. Lauren and Henry have also recently opened a Swift cellar door and established a contract winemaking facility (Custom Crush Hawke’s Bay) on the original Stonecroft site on Mere Road in Hastings. They currently have 14 small-batch clients on their books, with room and plans to grow.
It’s not been an easy road though. There have been side hustles along the way: they’ve renovated houses to help fund their business, and their sausage dog sidekicks have pitched in by producing saleable litters. “It’s been pretty insane. Henry and I have funded Swift solely on our own. I still don’t pay myself after 10 years because we’re just trying to grow the business. I ask my accountant to not tell me how much money we’ve put in.”
Lauren was lining up the deal for the winemaking facility when she was 38 weeks pregnant with their second son. “I thought, I don’t want to pull the trigger on this until I meet this next baby because our first was very finicky. I signed the lease at five days postpartum so I never really stopped working. Thankfully Louis is our chill babe. He just got strapped to my chest and accompanied me everywhere. He was on a blanket on the floor in the winery office when he was three months old, kicking around while we were in negotiations to sign up new clients to the winery.”
Working with grapes predominantly grown in Hawke’s Bay’s Bridge Pa Triangle wine district, where she cut her teeth as a winemaker, Lauren follows the minimal intervention route. Her ethos: don’t add if you don’t have to. “I know it sounds a little ‘woo’, but honouring the land and following the grapes’ cues hasn’t failed me yet. ‘Natural’ doesn’t have to mean ‘weird’. Our wines are made with wild yeast and minimal intervention – but they’re clean, fresh and balanced. No funky science experiments here.”
Lauren’s approach to winemaking says much about who she is as a person. She says she aims for modern refinement without pretence. “We make vibrant, expressive Hawke’s Bay wines that make life more fun. I think wine should be exciting and about discovery – not just making a product taste the same each year.”
When asked what her most audacious wines are, Lauren says, “I think our Marceline Blanc de Blanc, méthode traditionnelle, zero dosage is a pretty adventurous wine. The Gamay – chilled red – is also a high talking point, along with our 100% whole bunch Cabernet Franc. All very delicious wines made with purpose and so far from commercial wine production in every way.”
Her latest venture, a sparkling Albariño wine made from grapes sourced from the coveted Two Terraces Vineyard, is among the first of its kind in New Zealand. It’s called Pipi (named after her youngest dachshund) and is swiftly becoming the fastest mover in her portfolio. “It’s sparkling, lively, playful and a little disobedient, just like her namesake,” Lauren says. “It’s relatable and versatile. It’s like the best bits of Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Gris and Chardonnay all in one.”
When it came to marketing her new sparkling Pipi, Lauren opted to photograph it alongside a plate of fish and chips. A bid to bring some down-to-earth branding into the New Zealand wine sphere? “Yes, absolutely. I think a big miss in wine marketing is creating an unobtainable vision that just isn’t relatable to the general public. Don’t get me wrong – I think there’s a time and a place for that, but for me, it’s about building a community through real, relatable connection.”
She thinks the perky nature of her branding has caused some consumers to question the seriousness of her winemaking endeavours – and the level of effort involved behind the scenes. “Because my brand is fun, people probably think it’s all been super easy. But it’s been sheer grind.”
All that hard graft is worth it though. “At times I’ve thought, should I just go and get a normal job and only work eight hours a day? But that’s just not appealing to me. Producing something that I think is amazing and having other people drink it and think the same, is pretty bloody special.”
