Australian winemaker hits her stride in heart of Burgundy

Bligny-lès-Beaune: Jane Eyre readily admits that while working as a hairdresser in Melbourne over twenty years ago, “I probably drank more gin and tonic” – but a flair for coaxing top-notch wines from storied Burgundy vines has propelled her into the French wine firmament.

“There’s nothing like making your own wine,” Eyre says while inspecting a glass of Savigny-les-Beaune premier cru aux Vergelesses, one of a half-dozen of her recent reds. French peers believe there’s nothing quite like her wines – this month Eyre became the first Australian, and the first woman, to win the Negociant of the Year award by the Revue du Vin de France, an insider’s guide to France’s finest bottles.

The prestigious title recognises the talent of a particular brand of winemaker – independent players who don’t own vineyards but buy grapes from others to make their own. While the term translates as “merchant,” it has a distinctive meaning in Burgundy, where it’s effectively a license to buy grapes or bulk wine for production and resale, though often they end up as underwhelming, low-price tipples.

For Eyre, who grew up in Gippsland, Victoria, on Australia’s southeast coast – where she now also makes a wine she imports to France – it was the easiest way to chase a dream sparked by a conversation she had while cutting a client’s hair.

Soon after she quit her job and headed to France in 1998, where she helped with the harvest at the family-owned Domaine Chevrot, eventually working at other houses in Burgundy as well as in the Mosel region in Germany while also obtaining a wine-making degree back home.

A few years later she landed at a vineyard owned by New Orleans native Chris Newman, becoming his assistant while also making her own wines on the side. “I started with nothing. A friend lent me 5,000 euros ($6,000) and my boss gave me my first new barrel,” she said.

Eyre now works with a handful of growers to know exactly when their grapes are going to peak, and shows up to handle her harvests herself, “so I know exactly what I’m getting.” With stocks from celebrated vineyards such as Volney, Corton or Gevrey-Chambertin, she then oversees the fermentation and ageing at a shared “wine studio” at the Chateau de Bligny outside Beaune.

In the cellar, she also dips every bottle top in wax to cover the cork, and applies her subdued white labels by hand.