Reaping the wages of zin Winemaker Jane Wilson has found the best way to make it big is to start small, says Fiona Russell. Small really can be beautiful. “It might be a whole lot of hard work, but making smaller things better is ultimately the most rewarding,” says winemaker extraordinaire Jane Wilson. The former vet might well be on to something, but it’s been a long time coming. For thirteen years Wilson has been producing wines in Australia that contradict the principles of the country’s modern wineries. “Our vines are grown in a low-cropping, old-fashioned way,” explains the Scot, who headed to Australia for a year out after qualifying as a vet in Glasgow and “never really returned”.

“We do not irrigate, we do not use trellising, we allow the vines to grow only small quantities of grapes. This is all incredibly uneconomical and highly labour-intensive, but it does produce some fantastic fruits. The wines that come from these concentrated berries are intensely flavoured but much lighter and lower in alcohol than the average Aussie wine,” she says.

You might imagine such small-scale winemaking would be a dangerous sport in a country so renowned for its big, heavyweight reds. “When I started planting the vines in 1993, everyone said I was mad,” Wilson says. “Drinkers were so in love with the heavy Aussie wines that it was difficult to see tastes changing, It would have also been much easier to make money with higher-yielding crops. But I wanted to try something different. It was almost like I was daring to produce something different. I have to be honest, though: if I’d known how hard the process was going to be, mentally and physically, I doubt I would have started it.”

But the hard work has finally started to pay off for Wilson, who in the past year has won two major international accolades. “The best thing is that these awards were for my zinfandels, which are notoriously fickle and difficult to produce,” she says. “They are the flagship wines of California, and I even managed to beat the zin kings at their own game.”

Wilson is probably more astute than you might think. Having “fallen into winemaking”, she has built a highly regarded reputation in the industry. She is married to David Lowe, 48, a former chief winemaker of the renowned Rothbury Winery and highly respected in his own right. “I always knew that veterinary practice wasn’t for me,” says Wilson, who is originally from Oban. “I’m far too artistic for that. But I still have a scientific part to me. Food is a great love, but I prefer to be involved in the production of it. I thought I might end up in farming. “When I first came to Australia I was working on a stud farm in the Hunter Valley where a lot of good wine is produced. Winemaking struck me as a wonderful mix of both art and science. You have to be able to describe the taste of the wine, to explain it to people, but you have to be scientific in the process of making the wine and looking at soils for instance. “I was lucky enough to meet Len Evans, a big name in Australian wine, at a drinks party one night and I simply asked him if I could work at one of his wineries.

Wilson, 47, was fortunate to be given the chance to work her first vintage – “two months of hard yakka (work) during the harvesting season” – at Rothbury, where she met Lowe. They set about making a name for themselves producing other people’s wine. “It’s like being consultants,” says Wilson. “We worked very hard, around the world, turning other people’s grapes into good wines. We were uncompromising in what we produced. We gave sound advice to people planting their own vines and we stood for quality wines that were often hard to produce.”

The formidable couple moved back to Lowe’s home farm in Mudgee, in the Blue Mountains, a three hour drive from Sydney, in 1990 and continued to produce wine for others. “People deliver their grapes to us from their vineyards and we turn their small batches into wines. But it’s extremely hard work, with eighteen-hour days and a lot of labour, especially cleaning. Everything has to be so clean to avoid contamination.” Producing other people’s wines helped financially, and Wilson and Lowe, who have a fifteen year old son Alexander, also make their own wines under the label Tinja, using grapes bought back from customers’ vineyards mainly in the Hunter and Orange regions. But they wanted a new project, to grow and make their own wines. “Growing your own grapes and producing wine is such hard yakka,” says Wilson, “but we realised the soils and climate were ideal at Mudgee.”

Among others they planted more unusual sangiovese and barbera, alongside traditional vines of shiraz, merlot and chardonnay grapes. Wilson recognised that their inland, continental climate was ideal for producing zinfandel grapes. “And, of course, we weren’t going to make the whole process easy for ourselves,” she says, smiling wryly. “We had a long-term plan that we would try to build a brand; something unique in Australia. We knew we were taking a chance but we wanted to make wine the way we thought it should taste; much lighter and with more concentrated flavours. So this low-cropping, unirrigated idea was quite deliberate.” Winemaking by old-fashioned principle does not make big money. “It’s too labour-intensive for that,” says Wilson, whose huge passion and energy defy her petite stature. “We don’t use modern machinery and we have to employ a lot of people. There were years when we barely made any money. Really, if it hadn’t been for the other parts of our business, the consultancy work and making other people’s wines, we would not have survived. Our Lowe label wines have never made enough money for us to live off because we deliver such good quality, high-labour wines at low prices. “And, you know, neither David nor I are very patient,” she adds. “The last decade growing our own grapes has sometimes been torture for us. But every year we just kept plugging away. We like getting our hands dirty and being involved in the day-to-day winemaking process, but building up the vines has taken so long.”

As with many industries, fashions do eventually change and the wines produced from Mudgee vines started to attract attention. “Our luck came partly thanks to the new trend in the last six to eight years for fine dining and regional cooking,” explains Wilson. “Our wines, being very regional in style because of our unique soils, seemed to fit in. They’re also ideal table wines, being lighter and finer than the average, which makes them a good pairing with food. We also made a brave, but good, decision, to try to sell to smaller restaurants. We built up our brand slowly through the smaller establishments in Sydney.”

Their marketing then moved to Europe. Wilson says: “We figured Europe is more used to regional wines, for example in France, so we took a chance to bringing our ‘ridiculously unfashionable’ Aussie wines to England, and, of course, Scotland.” Again, by employing her sister-in-law Amanda Wilson, based in Gartocharn, near Loch Lomond, they aimed at smaller, select restaurants and independent shops. Slowly they built a reputation among establishments such as Stravaigin, the Ubiquitous Chip and the Buttery in Glasgow, and Braidwoods in Dalry. “I think the owners of these type of restaurants understood where we were coming from,” says Wilson. “They knew what it was like to build a brand from the smallest beginnings. They also loved our wines because they go so well with food.” Then, in the prestigious International Wine Challenge in 2005, their 2003 Lowe Family Zinfandel was a surprise International Zinfandel Trophy winner, described as “an incredibly textured wine with aromatics of blackberry, prune and black olive, chunky rich palate and fine dusty tannins”. Their 2003 Lowe Merlot and 2003 Lowe Sangiovese also took home medals.

This year the 2003 Lowe Reserve Shiraz took a medal, while the 2004 Lowe Family Zinfandel won a gold in the International Zinfandel category. “Small, it seems, is finally fashionable,” says Wilson. “And it might just be the answer to the current European wine crisis. Europe is experiencing a massive oversupply of grapes and wine saturation. People are being forced to leave good grapes on vines, But we are hoping because we’ve established a niche brand, we may survive. In any case, we do not rely on zinfandel for profits. It’s more about achieving something different. Yes, it’s been a long, hard slog, but people are now realising what else Australia has to offer. Our zinfandels are all about good Aussie wine with finesse.”