Domaine Heydon, Jura
Ken Heydon is a leading world trade economist. But he is also a man of many interests, including wine from his home town of Arbois in the Jura region of France.
So bitten by a desire to experience the local culture of winemaking and innate curiosity, Ken decided to explore the challenge of making wine.
Things started to fall into place when he was offered a patch of land by a friend. Ken then bought 50 wine plants (pieds de vigne) and set to work.
Viticulture, the harvesting and growing of grapes, is not for the faint hearted. There is lots of work involved. Planting, nurturing, pruning, battling with diseases, birds and insects. But Ken did it.
Then comes the harvest (vendanges), pressing the grapes to extract the juice, ageing the wine in a French oak barrel – some 30 litres!
The wine then had to be tested to see that the second (malolactic) fermentation took place. Then comes bottling, and ageing the wine for a few years.
So what was the result?
Ken tells me that his first few vintages had room for improvement. But the 2018 vintage that I tasted was quite good. It had a nice balance of tanin, fruit and acid. Indeed, it has a rich smoky flavour, with a taste similar to a rich sherry.
According to Katarina, Domaine Heydon is ideally paired with Coq au vin Jaune, Comté cheese and walnuts.
But when the Covid pandemic came along, Ken and Katarina were in Australia. Ken’s vines suffered from neglect, and he lost ten of his fifty vines. Birds and badgers were attacking the vines from above and below.
Ken’s experience as a winemaker is something of which he is justifiably proud. But he feels that the time has come to pass the experiment onto a younger friend.
Congratulations Ken for your memorable experiment!