The Team

No matter how fabulous our wines are, we would be nothing without the people who sell them and serve them. All Green & Blue team members have been as carefully hand selected as everything else and we hope you’ll agree that they are an impressive bunch.

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<span style="font-size:1.6em;font-weight:bold;">Tom Jurczyk</span><br/><b>Assistant Manager, Lordship Lane</b><br/><br/>In 1998 I went for a two-month holiday to Germany. I stayed with a friend who happened to have a vineyard and a sand-mine, in a small village in the Nahe region. Days are long when you re 16 and the only teenagers I knew around there, were the daughters of my friends sister; that part of the family ignored me after the incident from year before, when I...<br/><br/>As I said, days are long when you re 16 in a small village, where the only kind of entertainment is provided by Solitaire! So I was helping out at the sand mine, the vineyards... and with the goats. The mine was most fun, with the trucks and diggers. I however was usually sent off to prune vines on the steep slopes around the village.<br/><br/>I liked that job as it gave you a lot of time to think about stuff. Eventually, I had to cut the thinking a bit as I pruned too short.<br/><br/>How did I get to London? Well, I didn t pass the university exams and I decided to take a gap year. Veni, vidi and after working in the "catering business" for about a year I met Jude who mentioned opening a wine shop with his wife. I applied and was taken on board and here I am… <span style="font-size:1.6em;font-weight:bold;">Emily</span><br/><b>Waitress and Designer, Lordship Lane</b><br/><br/>I’m a firm believer that life is a blend of fate and what you make of it. I stumbled across Green and Blue completely by chance, with no idea of the impact it was to have on my future career.<br/><br/>After graduating with a design degree from Goldsmiths College in the summer of 2007, I was in need of a break from the inevitable pressure that surrounds creative courses. When I saw a position advertised in the window of Green and Blue, I hoped that being a waitress would provide me with the break I needed. How wrong I was! Working in the hospitality industry is incredibly challenging, but more importantly I soon realized that I really cared about the company. I defy anyone to find a more supportive and inspiring management team than Kate and Jude. I’m constantly learning from them and their enthusiasm for wine is totally infectious!<br/><br/>I believe in Green and Blue and I’m determined to be a part of it’s growth. I am now more involved in the design and marketing side of the business, which happily combines my creative passions with a newfound love of exciting wines and my absolute contentment at being a part of this team.    
    <span style="font-size:1.6em;font-weight:bold;">Eliza Conlon</span><br/><b>Waitress and Resident Artist, Lordship Lane</b><br/><br/>Just under eight months ago, after returning from travelling around South-East Asia, I joined the Green and Blue team. Following my post-travelling blues I picked myself up and applied for a position. Although initially I saw it as just a job I soon realised it was much more than that.<br/><br/>I am hugely grateful to Kate, Jude and Green and Blue. I never thought that in such a small space of time I would have learnt so much - their passion and enthusiasm for good wine is contagious! Thanks to Green and Blue I know that my ability to appreciate the individuality and flavours of good grapes will never leave me!<br/><br/>As an Art student I try to use my creativity as much as possible within Green and Blue, mainly looking after the window displays, signs and boards.<br/><br/>I am continuously learning at Green and Blue and hope to continue to do so for a long time. <span style="font-size:1.6em;font-weight:bold;">Kate</span><br/><b>Owner of Lordship Lane and Clapham</b><br/><br/>Much as I love the world of delicious, real wine (and I really do), creating places where people love to come because they are friendly and welcoming and full of all sorts of delicious things to eat and drink is as important to me. Selling often very obscure wines from smaller producers is for me part of a bigger challenge today, i.e. helping people to understand and appreciate exactly where what they eat and drink come from. This is why we do so many tastings and School of Wine.<br/><br/>I didn’t always want to run my own business. For a long time, I believed that nothing could be worse and in many ways, I was right. Eventually however, I realised that the only way I would ever be able to sell the sort of wines I really loved in exactly the right context and at the right price would be to do it myself.<br/><br/>Green & Blue is really hard work and, still being quite a fledgling business, means lots of sleepless nights as well. I would not change a thing though. I get to work with my lovely husband (unfortunate marital spats in the work place aside), we have many really lovely, loyal customers as well as a very cherished team who work with us and I completely believe in what we sell.
       
    <span style="font-size:1.6em;font-weight:bold;">Jude</span><br/><b>Owner and Manager of Lordship Lane and Clapham</b><br/><br/>Before I met Kate, I was a painter and silversmith who also worked as a part time deli manager. I am still not quite sure how I ended up managing Green & Blue in Lordship Lane as well as keeping an eye on Clapham, but my wife assures me that one day it will all be worth it. I too have a burning passion against the mediocre and mass produced (in the worlds of art and silver jewellery as well as wine) and love the fact that we are on a crusade to bring beautiful, real wines to people who might not find them that easy to get hold of otherwise. It is the really handmade, incredibly ‘natural’ wines that we sell that I love most of all. There is something really creative about them. I could not possibly choose one favourite – I could list 100, but there really isn’t space here. Also, the list would probably change tomorrow. I get huge satisfaction from gradually winning over customers who initially found a wine quite weird and then gradually fell completely love with it. That happens a lot. <span style="font-size:1.6em;font-weight:bold;">Rebecca Skinner</span><br/><b>Manager, Clapham</b><br/><br/>I like to believe that my seminal wine-tasting experience was at the age of eight when my grandpa accidentally bought Jacobs Creek Riesling instead of Chardonnay (my parents being of the semi-continental persuasion that if you get your offspring accustomed to alcohol from an early age, they are less likely to later indulge in binge-drinking). In reality, it was when Kate came to give wine-tasting lessons at a restaurant I was working at. I was absolutely clueless...but suddenly a whole new world opened up! I was supposed to be studying anthropology - but all I could think about was Condrieu and Chateauneuf-du-Pape and the Napa Valley! Real life got in the way for a few years - with an Elvis wedding and spells living in Holland and Australia. Maybe it was the sight of kangaroos bouncing through the vineyards of Margaret River in Western Australia (apparently they have a particular penchant for Chardonnay grapes!) that made me realise: I want to be involved in wine! I returned to London in 2006 to study the WSET Advanced course and the Diploma, which Im still battling my way through! I was runner-up of the Young Wine Writer competition last year - and I am determined to win this year (if I can think of a decent title...!). Arriving at Green & Blue is very exciting for me, as I am thrilled by the prospect of selling all these fabulous handmade wines...and I cannot wait to taste my way through the list!
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