Hello, I’m in the beautiful Hawkes Bay at the moment for the 2009 Romeo Bragato conference, but thought I would take a moment to tell you about what has been going on in the office the last week!
Things have actually been very busy, and I have only had a day and a half there this week. Not enough it seems! I flew up to Auckland last Friday, and my dear cousin Bella and I did a tasting at Caro’s on Saturday. While it was an Astrolabe tasting we did manage to open a bottle of Durvillea, to which we had great response. John said it was one of their busiest days this year – on par with Christmas apparently!
Then Monday night we had an Astrolabe dinner for the Auckland restauranteurs who have been stocking our wine to say thanks. We had it at a great Japanese restaurant called Soto. Great food matches for the wine!
Some of the team at Soto
Then back to the office. Slightly sobering, and many emails to come back to! However I did manage to sign off the Durvillea banners that you will start to see around when we do tastings. And print off some shelf talkers to send to some of our retailers- they are on their way guys!
On a slightly different but exciting note – I was contacted by a guy from the ship l’Astrolabe (named after Dumont D’Urville’s ship just like us). They are on a mission repairing huts in Antarctica and want to take some Astrolabe wine because of the name connection. I’m going to try and get them to take some Durvillea as well (since it’s named after the seaweed Durvillea Antarctica).
And now I’m in Hawkes Bay, still flat out! And running a virtual office from up here, working well so far. Jason is over in Europe, basing himself in Holland, although he was in Copenhagan the last couple of days. Est wines in Denmark who already take Astrolabe have just decided to take Durvillea in their next shipment, which is great news. He is off to see the SAS next, who already have our savvy on their inflight wine list.
Jane and Simon are in Hamilton, in fact Jane just did a Durvillea tasting at Te Rapa New World today, so I might go call her, want to hear how it went. … I’ll be back next week to let you know what else has been going on in the Durvillea/Astrolabe office.
- Sophie.