On the Road with the Grape Guy
Report from - Lunch with Jane Ferrari of Yalumba ... September 24, 2009
04 Oct 2009- Details
- Category: On the Road with the Grape Guy
Not sure if you caught my meeting with Jane Ferrari last time she was in town, but this time it was a more intimate affair. Eight of us got to sit around the table for a lunch with the lady who tells stories of the Australia we have all never experienced. Jane is a wealth of knowledge, not just about her employer, Yalumba Winery, but of the whole of Australia. And she’s not just a great storyteller; she has one of the most congenial and wry senses of humour you’ll even have the chance to be around. She is also straightforward, honest and what some would term as “real” as any person can get. Like when she talks about Australia’s big Chardonnay mistake: “15 year ago we shot ourselves in the foot with over worked, over oaked Chardonnay.” Or when she talks about her past life as a winemaker: “I’m a winemaker by trade but not by vocation,” she says, “I’m a better storyteller than I was a winemaker.” And when you get her onto the topic of her Hollywood crush she is unabashedly a George Clooney fan, “though I’ve moved on from him,” she reports, “since he won’t return my phone calls,” she finishes that statement with a sly smile. Her favourite movie, she claims, is Syriana, but she flies back in her chair and squeals with delight when the movie Michael Clayton is mentioned, “Yes, I love that one too – that one blew my tits off.” She says while gales of erupt from all in attendance; “I’ve never heard that one,” says the writer next to me, wiping a tear from his eye; we all talk briefly about the important plot points, Jane with added enthusiasm.
It’s that fresh, lively, off-the-cuff conversational style that makes Jane a pure pleasure to visit with; the kind of person you could have a beer (or a glass of wine) with and lose yourself in a variety of stories, all while whiling away the evening. As proof I offer this example: we sat down for lunch at 12:00 and didn’t get up till 3:30.
She talks about wine with the same passion she talks about George: “With a Shiraz-Viognier blend the magic level is 5%, we tried higher we’ve tried lower but 5% gives the right character to the wine; over that and you get too much Viognier character, a gluey palate and too much of that Viognier smell.” She also talks frankly about organic farming and how the Yalumba winery has been organic farming for years, the only difference: “organic farmers would leave their crop to mildew if they had that problem [meaning they’d lose the crop], we would spray if we had to, that’s what keeps us from being certified organic.”
But my favourite comment of the afternoon was an off-handed remark ... (read about the remark and the wines )
