Foods that rely on natural fermentation in their manufacture give the consumer a kiss of regional flavour. Out of a melange of lactobacilli bacteria and wild yeasts that live in the air where the food is made comes a unique regional souvenir. Sourdough bread is one such food and each sourdough culture has a unique flavour. In Europe some starter cultures are hundreds of years old and are prized family heirlooms.
Twenty one years ago, John Calvert, a lawyer by training but then helping his father on the family farm at Weering, and his wife, Bronwynne, also a lawyer but home on maternity leave with the couple’s first child, mixed flour and water on their kitchen bench and waited for the fermentation that would form the starter culture that they still use today in their bakery, Irrewarra Sourdough.
The story of Irrewarra Sourdough is the most recent chapter in a family history that stretches back to when John’s great great grandfather left Ecclefechan in the Scottish Lowlands, an area with some similarities to the landscape of Victoria’s Western District (see our earlier post on the Western District). In 1842 he bought the 69,000 acre ‘Pollock Station’ in the Western District of the then Port Phillip District of Victoria. Not long after, however, in the 1850s, after legislation for compulsory freehold purchase of land was introduced, the station was split up and subsequent generations of Calverts were allocated or, like the second generation, drew from a hat, in the case of the Calverts, for their quarter of the station.
The continual dilution of Calvert family ownership of Pollock Station is a trend that echoed across many Western District properties of early settler families. Much later, in the 1920s, compulsory soldier settlement acquisition of land for World War 1 veterans, resulted in further division of land. For the Calvert family this meant the compulsory acquisition of their remaining few thousand acres at Irrewarra and Dreeite, with the original 1842 farmstead becoming a dairy farm, and the 1850 wool shed part of another settler farm. The Irrewarra homestead and stables (1880) were the remaining Calvert family interest until their sale in 1935.
It was sixty years later, in 1995, that the Calvert family interest in the area was revitalised when John and Bronwynne discovered the foundations of the original Irrewarra House and stables. Their involvement moved up several notches when they seized the opportunity to buy back part of the original Irrewarra Station in 1998. When the first loaves of Irrewarra Sourdough were baked in the newly fitted out stable block, a new chapter of the Calvert family in the Western District began. That chapter has just closed and another opened with the commissioning of the new bakery, situated in the shadow of the original Calvert homestead foundations and next to the stables. This splendidly designed building melds traditional materials of corrugated iron and bluestone with more modern looking glass and beautiful, locally made wooden doors and joinery.
The Irrewarra Sourdough brand has already become an established part of the regional ‘foodscape’. However, the new bakery, situated not far from the upgraded Princes Highway, will soon become a destination in itself, where customers will be able to see the bread being made, have a tasting and buy the full range of Irrewarra Sourdough products. The bread will continue to be delivered to customers across a generous sweep of towns in the Western District, including the coastal strip of the Great Ocean Road, Warrnambool, Geelong, and in the opposite direction, further afield to Melbourne.
The Story of Irrewarra Sourdough
Every business decision holds a multitude of elements, each with a tipping point for action. However, the common denominator in any decision to start a food business is, without exception, a great love of food and in the Calverts case, their love of food and wine which had taken them to Europe in the early 1990s was paramount.
Browynne readily admits that, “ We both have a great love of food and wine: bread, wine and cheese. In the early 1990s, we gave up our jobs as lawyers to do a trip to Europe and most importantly, to pick the grapes and work in the winery at Domaine Jacques Prieur in Meursault, in Burgundy, for the vintage of 1992. When we returned to Australia, we started considering our options. John’s father did not want to retire and we decided that we didn’t want to be start-up farmers, but we also knew that we didn’t want to go back to Melbourne and be lawyers again.
There were a number of things that contributed to the process behind our decision. When we were in France there was an artisan breadmaker in Beaune where we would buy sourdough and of course there was Poilane [in Paris]. Closer to home, in Melbourne, good bread making was starting to emerge and regional food, so important in France, was starting to take shape here too. There was Meredith Dairy and George Biron over at Sunnybrae. These businesses really inspired us. There was Wholefoods Cafe in Geelong that made sourdough bread and baguettes but you could really only buy the bread when they had some left over from sandwiches.
On New Year’s Day, 1999, contemplating our future, we came up with the idea of having a sourdough bakery supplying the south west and the Great Ocean Road. We would wholesale and use the skills that we had built up and fine tuned over four years of baking at home. Once we had decided, we were convinced that it was a fantastic idea. I then asked the graphic designer at the law firm where I was working, to design a logo and when we had a logo, we had a brand and we felt that we had a business.
In thinking about the location, we realised that having just bought Irrewarra, we already had one. We decided that we would restore the stables and fit it out as a bakery. We worked solidly throughout that year, naming the business, organising the permit to have the bakery at Irrewarra in a farming zone, packaging, architects, equipment, bakery design. It was quite a balancing act and of course, we had two children but I kept working until August and in September 1999 we did the fit out. On New Year’s Eve 1999 we had three phase power connected from the highway and we did a test bake on New Year’s Day 2000.
The following day we did a bake and I took that bread to the shops along the Great Ocean Road. Of course, the coastal towns along the Great Ocean Road in January are absolutely packed in January and when I walked into the stores and showed them the bread they wanted to just buy it there and then. It was amazing! I went to Colac Fruit Supply, to Lorne Greens, Airey’s Inlet General Store and Anglesea supermarket. In that first week, Lorne sold out in an hour, so they increased to seventy [loaves] the next day and then to one hundred. The orders increased. We’d bake then I would go along the Great Ocean Road and deliver the bread.
Fortunately, one of the couriers who was going along the Great Ocean Road saw our bread in the stores and phoned us up, asking if he could deliver for us and we said, “Yes please”! Within a fortnight we advertised for a bakery assistant and a packaging assistant.
Three months after our launch, we were excited to find Irrewarra Sourdough listed as one of the top bakeries in a big article on sourdough that appeared it The Age, Epicure. Our sales were increasing, we were invited to supply the Queen Victoria market in Melbourne and that encouraged others to seek out our bread. We just kept on baking, employing more people and, as word got around sales grew every year.
Then, in 2006 we came to a crossroad. We were a small artisan bakery but we were not sure where to go from there. So we went back to France where we saw Poilane and the chain, ‘Paul’ bakery. What we discovered from these, especially from Poilane, was that because he was making wood fired sourdough, when he expanded, he had to expand in cells. That is to say, he didn’t go into a factory, he expanded by ovens, so that there was one baker to an oven: so he multiplied by oven. We thought we would do the same – expand by oven.
We searched for some space to do a fit out and found a small factory space in Colac. We fitted it out just like our little artisan bakery in the stables and then used that to supply Melbourne and the old Irrewarra bakery to supply the local region. We used exactly the same techniques, ingredients, everything: we just replicated it. When, in 2010, we outgrew the space, we leased the shed next door and joined the two spaces. We have expanded organically: it’s been demand driven”.
When the Calverts open the doors into the visitors area of their new Irrewarra Sourdough bakery, the Calvert name and Irrewarra will be written into the food and farming history of the Western District yet again. The farming thread has stretched a long way from the Scottish Lowlands almost 200 years ago. Oh, to know what John’s great great grandfather, whose photo sits on the mantle in the stable block at Irrewarra, thinks of the new building that stands across from his old homestead and the industriousness of his descendants? I think he would be both amazed and delighted.
For stockists across the Western District and in Melbourne see: irrewarra.com.au and look for ‘Bread stockists’ in the menu