JC's Own

JC’s Own is the solo venture of Jaysen Collins. We know Jaysen very well, through his Massena wines that he produces with his friend, Barossa veteran and Vinorium favourite, Dan Standish. It’s fair to say that Jaysen follows a creative style of winemaking, interfering as little as possible and allowing the grapes to do the work for him.

However, his twenty years of wine-making experience and his other project at Massena means that this experimental style is far more than just guess work! Very often, his wines are born out of an idea and Jaysen, drawing on his years of experience, has an inherent ability to seek out the vineyards that will communicate this idea to its very fullest. He even conceived the idea for the label of one of the wines first, and set out to produce a wine that would express the sense of this, finding the ideal site in Adelaide Hills.

Jaysen is Barossa born and bred, starting out as a qualified accountant, he began working in the business side of wine, becoming the general manager for Turkey Flat as well as the great Barossa winery St Hallett. It wasn’t long however, until Jaysen’s passion for wine grew and he decided that he’d “rather make wine than crunch numbers”. So scraping together enough money to buy some Grenache and Shiraz, he produced his first vintage with his good friend Dan Standish. Massena was originally meant to be no more than a side project for personal consumption, but grew to be one of Barossa’s most recognized and respected brands.

After two decades honing his skills as a wine maker, Jaysen felt it was time to take another step and start his solo project. JC’s Own wines are about letting the grapes do the talking and allowing them to naturally express the site from which they are picked, seeking out sustainable vineyards and practicing minimalist wine-making, using natural yeast, minimal sulphur and no fining or filtration.

His wines are about the unadulterated essence of the grape, combining a sense of place and some great looking bottles!