Every spring, Australian winemakers travel to the northern hemisphere to help make wine. It’s part holiday, part education and, after a few weeks, they return to their wineries and the start of a new growing season.
But every now and then one stays. Jane Eyre is one who stayed.
Eyre’s journey to Burgundy started in the 1990s when she was working as a hairdresser.
With a holiday to Europe booked, she organised some work at a Bordeaux winery through a hairdressing client. The holiday proved to be the start of a new career.
“I came back here and enrolled in a winemaking degree at Charles Sturt University and ended up working at the St Kilda Prince Wine Store,” Eyre says.
“Working there was great – there was great enthusiasm and we sold wines from all over the world. It was great palate training.
“Every time we did dinners with someone interesting, I’d call them and ask if I could do vintage with them.”
Working at the Prince Wine Store gave Eyre the flexibility to spend time at wineries during the vintage harvest.
“I’d go back to Burgundy for harvest every year, plus a couple of vintages in New Zealand with Ata Rangi and Craggy Range and with Vanya Cullen (in Margaret River).”
At the end of 2003, South Melbourne Prince Wine Store opened and Eyre was offered the job of manager at the now-closed St Kilda shop. The job came with a catch – she wouldn’t be able to take three months off a year to make wine.
“I thought ‘if I don’t go now I’ll never go’,” says Eyre, and a few months later she was working for the highly regarded Burgundy producer Domaine des Comtes Lafon.
Eyre has been assistant winemaker at Domaine Newman since 2006. In 2011 she made the first wine, a pinot noir, under her own label, Jane Eyre.
“At first I wanted to make wines in one of the more prestigious regions – Pommard, Volnay, for example,” Eyre says.
“Then I got calls from two friends to say there was a parcel of fruit at Savigny-les-Beaune, which wasn’t on the radar, but I went to see the vineyard and the grower was someone I knew – he lived up the road from my in-laws and had even been to my wedding.”
Eyre added a Gevrey-Chambertin to the range in 2012 and at the same time started making pinot noir in Australia with friend William Downie.
“Bill Downie gave me access to the best parcels of wine that he has,” says Eyre, who makes pinot noir from the Mornington Peninsula and Gippsland.
“I’m here too late for the Yarra, but really wanted to make wine from Gippsland, which is where I’m from.
“[It’s great] to be able to come out and work with my friends here and see a different vintage and different fruit because you don’t work with [the grapes] in the same way – they’re ripe and there’s plenty of tannin there.
“I’m not trying to take over the world of wine, or become a 5000-case producer. The idea is to get the best parcels I can.”
TASTE THIS
Jane Eyre Aux Vergelesses Savigny-lès-Beaune 1er cru 2011 (Burgundy) $80; 13% 5 stars
Beguiling and perfumed – on the nose and in the mouth – with cherry, plum, raspberry, cut flowers, earth and spicy cinnamon and cedar oak. It’s a wine with a really light touch that grew in stature as it was exposed to air, developing dark cherry and plum characters to complement the red berry, strawberry and spice flavours that hit the tongue from the outset. With a seamless structure, this flows and fans out as it crosses the tongue.
Food match | Grilled quail
Jane Eyre Pinot Noir 2013 (Mornington Peninsula) $50; 13.5% 4 ½ stars
This comes from a single vineyard in Merricks at the north of the Mornington Peninsula, which was planted in 1998. The wine sees no new oak and there’s a small component of fermented whole bunches, which usually adds texture and perfume – as it does here. Bottled three months ago, the wine’s just a pup. Rich and earthy, this has savoury spice, plum and dark cherry flavours. It’s smooth, with energetic blood orange-flavoured acid and a powerful finish.
Food match | Hot-smoked salmon
Jane Eyre Pinot Noir 2013 (Gippsland) $50; 14% 4 ½ stars
Jane Eyre’s Gippsland pinot noir comes from a higher elevation than the fruit in the peninsula wine. The hand-picked grapes are handled in a strictly hands-off manner: they’re de-stemmed and fermented in a stainless-steel tank before being aged in old oak barrels. This elegant pinot noir is bright and perfumed, with an elegant core of red and black cherries on the nose and in the mouth, fine acid and a lightness that belies the wine’s 14 per cent alcohol.
Food match | Rabbit stew
Jane Eyre Savigny-les-Beaune Pinot Noir 2012 (Burgundy) $80; 13% 4 ½ stars
While Jane Eyre’s 2011 Savigny-les-Beaune was from a single vineyard, this wine is from three premier cru vineyards. It’s no less interesting. It’s fully de-stemmed (so no stalks, which are so hot in local pinot noir right now), sees no new oak, and its earthy, graphite aromas include raspberry, strawberry and plum. Smooth and elegant, there’s zip and tension along with delightful light red fruit flavours.
Food match | Roast rack of lamb
Jane Eyre Gevrey-Chambertin 2012 (Burgundy) $80; 13% 4 ½ stars
In a practice rarely seen in Australia, the grapes were vinified before Jane Eyre bought the juice (rather than fermenting the grapes herself) and the oak maturation, malolactic fermentation and blending was done by Eyre. It’s bursting with flavour – violets and earth, with bubble-gum characters to the strawberry and red fruits – but shows restraint, with structured, mineral tannins driving its lovely length.
Food match | Duck rillettes
