Jenny Dobson: From Burgundy to the Hawke's Bay

“Within a week of arriving in Burgundy, I thought, ‘I have found my dream; this is all I want to do’. I love the culture of food and wine, and the appreciation, and the fact that it’s the lifeblood of what we do... I had landed in heaven.”

Forty-six years later, Jenny been named a 2025 New Zealand Winegrowers Fellow, and is as passionate as ever about her vocation, including running her own bespoke Hawke’s Bay wine label and championing New Zealand wine, here and abroad. “I am very, very humbled to be awarded this fellowship,” she says. “Because I am doing what I love.”

Raised in a family that supported her career ambitions (including her feisty grandmother Doris), Jenny didn’t see any barriers when she set off for France, with little understanding of the language or culture. “Within six weeks of being there I was told that women aren’t allowed in cellars because they have funny acids that are going to turn the wine to vinegar,” she says. “They were quite serious about it, but I thought it was ridiculous, so it didn’t set me back.”

Her first job was at Domaine Dujac, where she helped with bottling before harvest, then picked grapes all day, before turning up at the winery to see if she could help. One day she slipped off the narrow edge while plunging and fell into the vat. Jenny told the winemaker a few hours later and was bemused to watch him rush to the winery to ensure the wine had not been ruined. The slip proved fortuitous, and by the second year she was allowed to foot plunge.

After 18 months, Jenny moved to work in the cellar and vineyard of another small producer in Burgundy, where no one spoke English, but the language of food and wine proved “pretty universal”. She then moved to Paris to work for the late British wine expert Steven Spurrier, whose wine tasting school and shop provided a “phenomenal” tasting education. After 18 months, she went to Bordeaux to work the “outstanding” 1982 vintage at Château Rahoul in Graves, owned then by Len Evans. Then it was back to Paris, before being offered a job as a cellar hand at Chateau Sénéjac, in the Haut Médoc. She arrived at the beginning of 1983, only to find that the cellar master was sick, leaving Jenny with the choice of walking away or stepping into the role. “I was just in the right place at the right time,” she says of becoming the first female Maître de Chais in Bordeaux. Right time, right place, but also right attitude, of course. “Naivety again,” Jenny says, while also acknowledging the New Zealand mindset of “well let’s just get on with it”.

She stayed at Chateau Sénéjac for 11 years, during which time she married and had three children. “There was no such thing as maternity cover in those days. My maternity leave was my time in the maternity home. However, I lived where I worked, and my babies came to work with me.” By 1994, Jenny started to notice a glass ceiling, and was yearning to be around family, with her children growing up and her parents aging out of regular travel from New Zealand.

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They went to Western Australia for a year as a trial run, before moving to New Zealand in 1996, checking out wine regions from Northland to Central Otago, before settling on Hawke’s Bay for its Bordeaux connections. Jenny had a contract to look after Sacred Hill’s red winemaking for the 1996 vintage, and also set up as a consultant. Her French experience proved valuable to Hawke’s Bay winegrowers, particularly in terms of blending. At that stage, New Zealand and Australian winemakers tended to use blending to hide faults, whereas in Bordeaux “two and two make five”, she says. “You have two good things, and you make something better with blending.” That doesn’t start in the winery, but back in the vineyard, Jenny says. “You are walking through the vineyard tasting grapes and envisaging what wine they will make, and I am always envisaging what part of the blend they will make.”

Five of the six Jenny Dobson Wines are single variety, because they are made in such small volumes, “which is why I love making my clients’ wines,” Jenny says. But there is “a little nod to blending” in her own wines, with her first Doris made in 2018 in a single ferment of Merlot with whole bunch Cabernet Franc and Malbec. “There’s no recipe for Doris in any wine book. I wasn’t sure what I was doing, but I only had myself to answer to.” Putting whole bunch into a fairly tannic grape mix seemed counterintuitive. “You were bringing in more tannins, but they were actually synergistic. They made the tannins not drier but more succulent.” She was delighted by the result, and named it for her non-conforming grandmother, who dyed her hair purple in the 1960s. “I thought this is a Doris wine. This is breaking with tradition. If I taste it, I think purple.”

Knowing she was doing something different with Merlot, she put it in a Burgundy bottle in 2019 (in Doris non-conforming style) and put her grandmother on the label, with a sketch by Australian-based New Zealand artist Hugo Mathias, a friend of Jenny’s son. Just like Doris, the wine is getting “a little bit more adventurous” with age, says Jenny, who used whole bunch Malbec, Cabernet Franc and Syrah in the 2025 vintage, along with Fiano skins.

Her first own-label wine was a Fiano made in 2015, which she renamed Florence in 2019, deciding to follow Doris with wider homage to her family. She loves the match of the ancient Italian variety, “revered by the Romans”, and the vivacious and elegant grandmother on her father’s side. Six years on, there’s a Cabernet Franc named for her mother Francie, a Rosé (made by whole bunch pressed Cabernet Franc) for her “joyous” Aunt Patsy, a Merlot for Uncle Mac, and a Cabernet Sauvignon for Uncle Alick.

Jenny says the branding stands out on the shelf, and the story resonates. “People drink wines because of an occasion, because of a memory, because of a story. I’ve got a story, and the character of the wines relates to the character of the person, so they become very individual.”

Despite her classical background in wine, Jenny is very aware of the changing wine market and need to remain relevant. “I love drinking the old masters, but I am not making wines for the people who drink the highly expensive classic wines of the world… I want to give the new wine drinker as much enjoyment as I get from those wonderful wines.”

New Zealand, and the whole wine world, is having bit of a “crisis” Jenny says. “But wine will never go away. We just had to navigate our way through this.” In recent months she’s been in Europe, seeing vibrant wine bars, with a bottle or glass of wine on every table. “But it’s not the wines they were drinking 20 years ago; we just have to make ourselves relevant.”

As part of her boundary-breaking wine career, Jenny has spent 25 years on the New Zealand Society for Viticulture and Oenology, which will host the 11th International Cool Climate Wine Symposium in Ōtautahi Christchurch in January. She’s also loved being a mentor, both in an official capacity through the NZW mentoring scheme, and also with people she works with. “That gives me so much pleasure because experience is so important in the wine industry. It’s passing on that knowledge we have built up over the years.” And it goes both ways. “I get so much inspiration from young winemakers coming through with their exciting ideas.”