Interview * Adam & Lynne * BRESS wine, cider & produce

Today’s feature story is a tale of passion, hard work, commitment, community, good food, great wine, creativity, cooking & chook-ing! So, it’s no surprise to find that many of my photos show people with their heads down busily preparing, planting, harvesting or weeding garden beds because that’s pretty much what husband + wife team Adam Marks + Lynne Jensen (owners of BRESS Wine, Cider & Produce) do best – along with their creative & talented staff (Carly, Chris, Louise, Sue) & their merry band of skillful & cheery volunteers.

Adam is a qualified winemaker & viticulturalist of many years’ experience who found himself ‘disillusioned with large corporate winemaking’ BUT inspired by the ARTISAN producers of the Côtes du Rhône & Burgundy. Voila! Bress Wine, Cider & Produce was born – a sustainable ARTISANAL farm that produces wine, cider, olives, honey and a bounty of herbs & vegetables. The name ‘Bress’ & accompanying logo pay homage to Adam’s life-long love of chooks & his admiration for the famous chickens of Bourg-en-Bresse in France, where Adam spent some time. Even the Bress wines have chook-ish names such as ‘Silver Chook’, ‘Gold Chook’ and ‘Le Grand Coq Noir’! The latter hinting at the wonderful lightness of being & sense of HUMOUR that characterises a visit to Bress!

During the warmer months, Bress offers an AMAZING seasonal lunch menu with main courses cooked in the outdoor wood-fired oven and accompanied by freshly-harvested produce from the IMPRESSIVE kitchen garden. Having a TEAM that feels a bit like a big happy family seems central to Bress’ success. As well as wonderful staff who help run the vineyard, orchard, kitchen garden, wine tastings, harvest & prepare delicious meals Bress also has a lovely group of volunteers who help out in the kitchen garden. This often means heaps of weeding! BUT, they do get to share knowledge, enjoy one another’s company and sit to a long-table lunch that celebrates the food they work hard to tend. If all that doesn’t have you planning your first or next visit to Bress, Lynne has recently launched the Bress French Farmhouse Collection, a hand-selected and considered collection of beautiful French provincial vintage wares, antiques & collectibles – each with a focus on kitchen, garden, food & wine – that Lynne + Adam source during their trips to France.

To share a long-table lunch with Adam + Lynne & the Bress crew is to realise that Bress, Wine, Cider & Produce is so much more than a cellar door. Nestled in Harcourt at the granite-y foothills of Mount Alexander, Bress, Wine, Cider & Produce is a very unique & beautiful place where nature is honoured, life is enjoyed and HARMONY is found among like-minded folk. Adam + Lynne have created a collaborative celebratory joie de vivre unlike any other! Enjoy! x

Tell us a little bit about your background/s – what path led you to where you are now?

I developed an interest in wine when I was studying Hotel Management at William Angliss and decided to head to Charles Sturt University in Wagga Wagga to learn more about it. Like most winemakers it took me a few years to get through the course but I’m a qualified viticulturist and winemaker and have been making wine throughout the world for both large and small producers for over 25 years. Lynne and I re-met (we were teenage sweethearts) about 14 years ago when we’d both not long returned from working overseas. Lynne is a corporate lawyer and when we met up again she was a partner in a commercial law firm, working long hours and it took her weeks to find the time to go on a date with me!

We married in December 2000 at a time when I was very disillusioned with large corporate winemaking. I’d always had a dream of starting my own winemaking venture, creating wines inspired by the artisan producers I had met in the Côtes du Rhône and Burgundy. On our honeymoon in 2000, Lynne and I hatched a plan to make that dream a reality and Bress was born.

Tell us about ‘BRESS’. How did your passion to create artisan wine, cider, water & a market garden come about? How long did it take you to develop your vision from a dream to reality?

Bress started out similar to a French negotiant business. The French recognise that certain grape-growing regions are better suited to producing particular grape varieties than others and negotiants source high quality parcels of fruit from vineyards in notable grape-growing regions but don’t own vineyards themselves. That’s what we did. We sourced good quality grapes and used our friends’ wineries to make the wine. Our first wine was a Pinot Noir from the Yarra Valley and gradually we added other varieties – Shiraz from Heathcote and Semillon Sauvignon Blanc from Margaret River (when we moved to Perth for 2 years for Lynne’s work).

When we returned to Melbourne from Perth in 2004 we started looking for a home for Bress. We planned to continue with the “negotiant” element of the business but we wanted to give Bress a sense of place. Our inspiration was the mixed-farming enterprises of France and Italy that we’d visited on our travels. It was something that I first experienced when I worked in France in the 1990s, people eating with the seasons, sharing, helping each other, building a strong sense of community. We wanted to create a place to welcome visitors not only to taste wine but also to experience a lifestyle.

We happened upon a run-down vineyard and orchard in Harcourt with untapped potential that was perfect for us and coincidentally took us both back to our roots. My parents have a property in Fryerstown so I had spent a lot of time in the area as a young winemaker and Lynne’s mother was born in Castlemaine.

When we took over the property we had a lot of work to do to bring it back to life. We started to implement sustainable farming practices such as the use of natural biodynamic preparations and composting to improve the soil quality, reduce water consumption and improve plant health. This has resulted in a marked improvement in all of our crops – grapes, apples and vegetables.

The business has evolved over the years to include wine, cider, mineral water and produce such as honey and olives. We also operate a large kitchen and market garden that supplies fresh vegetables for the Bress Kitchen, which is open for lunch on weekends in the warmer months, and other local restaurants.

And why the name Bress? I have had a great love for chickens since I was a small boy and after receiving numerous chicken-themed presents for our wedding it was inevitable that a chicken would feature on the new wine label. Lynne and I struggled to agree on a name until we finally settled on Bress, an homage to the finest eating chickens in the world that hail from Bourg en Bresse in France. While working in Burgundy and Beaujolais in the 1990s, I visited producers of Bresse chickens and witnessed first hand their traditional methods of breeding chickens. Bress wines, ciders and produce are dedicated to the Bresse chickens and what they represent – artisan production using traditional, age-old methods.

What have you learnt along the way?

That things don’t happen overnight and you shouldn’t do too many things at once or you’ll end up doing none of them well. That’s been a hard lesson for me as I am naturally impatient! My new motto is “hasten slowly”.

You adopt sustainable & biodynamic principles. What makes you so passionate about sustainable farming?

As a young winemaker working in Chile I was confronted by the number of local children with birth defects as a result of the intensive use of agrochemicals and when we took over the property at Harcourt the soils were in a very bad condition after years of use of agrochemicals. We were determined to farm in a different way and return life and vitality to the soils. Use of biodynamic preparations and composting has been an important factor in soil and crop improvement. Its been fascinating to watch the worms return as the soil health has improved. For us sustainability is about recycling, reusing, considering whether you actually need to use something or not, keeping things as simple as possible and giving back to the land and the community.

BRESS is an inclusive & generous business. Tell us about the philosophy behind this approach. How do you find all the wonderful and highly skilled people that work for you & collaborate with you?

The most important tenet at Bress is that no-one works for us, they work with us. We are all part of the same team. We are passionate about what we do and fervently believe in it and that energy becomes infectious. The people who work with us are equally passionate. We work hard to make Bress a fun & inclusive place to work. Being part of the Bress team is just like being part of a close-knit family.

Tell us about your new ‘French Farmhouse Collection’? What inspires it?

The Bress French Farmhouse Collection is inspired by our shared passions for food, wine, antiques and France. We love travelling in France, exploring the regional food and wine, speaking the French language (Lynne perhaps a bit better than me!) and generally enjoying the French country lifestyle. We also love antique and vintage furniture and enjoy fossicking in antique stores and markets looking for hidden treasure, particularly objects that are both functional and decorative. So we decided to share those passions with others and on our trip to France earlier in the year we spent time in the antique fairs, shops and markets in some of our favourite towns in France to select a collection of antique and vintage furniture and collectibles with a cooking, dining, gardening and (of course!) winemaking, tasting and drinking theme for sale at Bress. All of the things that are an integral part of the Bress lifestyle.

What does a typical day in the life of ‘Adam Marks & Lynne Jensen of BRESS’ look like; from when you wake to when you go to sleep?

Every day is different and rarely goes to plan. We are farmers & subject to the vagaries of nature which we can’t control so we have to be flexible and reactive. A classic example of this is the day a few weeks ago when we had a full moon and I woke at 4am in Melbourne with a bad feeling that a frost was hitting the vineyard so we made a mercy dash to Harcourt to save the Riesling. It was minus 2 as we approached Mt Macedon but fortunately when we arrived at Bress it was zero degrees & there was no visible sign of frost. However, I rigged up the tractor and headed out in the dark to put on a spray just in case.

Do you consider yourselves to be ‘Countryphiles’? Do you love country life? Why?

We love life and can be happy anywhere but I have a greater affinity with the country and Lynne has grown to love it more and more. Being close and connected to nature and the seasons is important for the soul and country life gives you that.

What aspect of country life are you loving MOST at the moment?

Spring! This year is it an extraordinary one. Everything has come to life with incredible vigour and abundance. Our property is looking so beautiful right now it’s a joy to behold each morning. We are also enjoying all the new season’s vegetables from the garden, especially the asparagus which is tender, sweet and delicious.

What is the most CHALLENGING aspect of country life?

Nature. The thing you love most is always the most challenging.

Do you prefer Coffee or Tea? Your favourite country café and why?

I can’t drink coffee. Caffeine & I don’t mix. So I enjoy a infusion made with lemon verbena leaves from our garden. Lynne, on the other hand, loves coffee and makes a beeline for Cafe re-Public in Castlemaine. They make a very fine omelette too.

What and where was the last great meal you enjoyed/shared in the country?

Our end of vintage lunch at The Good Table in Castlemaine. Alex Perry is a gifted chef and our end of vintage lunch is always something to behold!

Where would we find you on a typical Saturday morning?

Doing yoga. We start the weekend off with a class with Cheryl Dingle at The Forge – a bit of tranquility before cellar door gets busy!

YOUR country town’s best kept secret?

Peddling Pastry. Chris Edwards has a pastry kitchen in the Enterprise Centre in Castlemaine where he makes delicious cakes, tarts and biscuits. His macaron are to die for! And he’s a pretty good cyclist too!

Would you ENCOURAGE others to live a country life? Why/why not?

Absolutely. The pace of life is slower, the cost of living is cheaper, there is a strong sense of community and best of all you wake each morning to breathe clean life-affirming air.

What ADVICE would you give those dreaming of making a TREE CHANGE?

You’ll never find everything you are looking for in one property. You’ll need to create some of what it is you want and that’s part of the fun, seeing your vision come to life.

What can we expect NEXT from you/your business in the future?

Watch this space. My head is full of ideas, too many to mention. Perhaps Bress TV?

What are you looking FORWARD to and why?

Vintage 2014. Tiny little bunches of grapes have started to appear on the vines and as soon as I see those I know the lure of vintage is not far away. It’s the most exciting time of year at Bress, new opportunities abound and there is a strong feeling of camaraderie amongst the team at vintage time. We get one shot at vintage a year so we need to be focussed and get it right.

What would be your dream project?

To establish Bress in a number of countries around the world. Why not dream big? We’ve talked about setting something up in France for years. Who knows…

Can you list for us 5 specific things you turn to/do when you need of a ‘dose’ of city life?

1. Go for a bike ride down Beach Road dressed in lycra. The Tour de Bress is not far away!
2. Take our dog Ollie for a walk along the beach. He loves the salt water.
3. Visit the markets (either the Queen Victoria or South Melbourne) and the Mediterranean Wholesalers in Sydney Road Brunswick for a foodie fix.
4. Go for a walk in the Royal Botanic Gardens. A wonderful place for inspiration.
5. Have a drink and a bite to eat at the City Wine Shop. They have an excellent “by the glass” wine list and a wonderful menu of comfort food.

Adam & Lynne
BRESS Wine, Cider & Produce
3894 Harmony Way (Old Calder Highway), Harcourt