An Australian in Burgundy

Mark Haisma doesn't like the term "flying winemaker." Reeling back in his chair, the tall, athletic Australian looks uncomfortable, with a face that says, "Call me anything, anything in the world, but don't call me that." Opening his hands to gesticulate, he breaks into a smile, explaining, "Look. I don't like it because it says to me the person has no connection to the vines, the area they work in or the vintage. If you are a flying winemaker, you can lose the perspective of the vintage. My philosophy is simple: It's the vineyard and it's the fruit—good clean fruit, that is what is important."

It has been nearly 30 years since Spanish winemaker Miguel Torres decided to cross the Atlantic and buy a vineyard in Chile. Crossing continents kept him busy in the winter and it wasn't long before a legion of Australian winemakers followed suit, jumping aboard the nearest 747 and making their way to France, where they quickly set about cleaning up wineries, introducing now-common practices such as temperature-controlled fermentation and generally improving the way the Old World made its wines. That was in the 1990s; a decade later, they were buying up land in the Languedoc in southwest France and making the sort of bold, easy-drinking, fruit-driven wines more commonly associated with their homeland in Australia.

What they didn't tend to do was land in one of the most impenetrable, complex and difficult regions in the world to understand, namely Burgundy, in eastern France. Home to the fickle Pinot Noir grape and the majestic Chardonnay, its hillsides have been planted with vines for more than a 1,000 years. The style of its wines—sometimes described as sinewy and linear, with aromas of raspberry or earthy notes—taste like no other and, in terms of a comparison scale, they are a long way from Australia's Barossa Shiraz. So it's an unlikely place to find Mr. Haisma, a man who learned his craft under the tutelage of Dr. Bailey Carrodus of Yarra Yering in the Yarra Valley in Victoria, Australia, and who is unmistakably Australian, despite taking his name from his Dutch father and his love of France from his mother, who hails from Lille.

"Yeah, I could have gone to the Languedoc," he says. "But I wanted to tackle something that is pretty important to me. At Yarra Yering, we were always taught about restraint, making a wine that expresses the purity of the fruit and reflecting the soil they are grown on. I'm a big acid boy; I love the brightness, freshness of the wines in Burgundy."

In Burgundy, the vignerons classify their wines not by property, as in Bordeaux, but by vineyards. The Napoleonic laws of inheritance mean that the estates cannot be inherited by one heir alone, so these vineyards are invariably sliced up into numerous parcels of land, owned by different people. In such an environment, buying land isn't easy.

It took Mr. Haisma two years before anyone would sell him Chardonnay. He then set up shop in a small village outside of Gevrey-Chambertin, where he now makes a little more than half a dozen wines from a rented cellar. His wines are seductive, retaining that balance of power and acidity. As well as a straight Bourgogne Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, he also makes parcels of wines from fruit sold to him from vineyards in Burgundy. His Gevrey-Chambertin is floral, with a touch of spice, while his Morey Saint Denis has a seductive fragrance and silky texture. He has also made some Chambertin-Clos de Bèze 2009. "What I have learned in Burgundy is that you need a good sorting table," he says. "In 2008, 30% of the fruit was rotten. Without a sorting table, that is going into the final blend. I take great care in the vineyard and let the fruit do the talking—at the end of the day, we are winemakers, not scientists."

What is interesting about modern winemakers like Mr. Haisma is that they are producer, négociant and merchant in one. Mr. Haisma sells his tiny production by himself, through the Internet and a handful of specialist wine shops. "To have made these wines is a life goal. Tomorrow I can die a happy man," he says. This is one winemaker who isn't flying anywhere in a hurry.