Not the weekend just been but the weekend before I was up in Auckland, I was up there to support some of the retailers that have been selling our wine, by going to visit them and doing tastings in their stores.
Bella, my cousin now lives up there so she came along to help me out- along with the help of my trusty GPS to get us around Auckland!
While I was up there for a few Astrolabe tastings, we managed to fit a Durvillea one in concurrently at Farro’s (80 Lunn Ave, Mt Wellington, Auckland), where we had a fantastic response, with the savvy walking out the door! Farro’s is a fabulous “fresh food concept store” which is a great store to have our wine in, and the sort of store that I wouldn’t mind Blenheim getting!
After Auckland I was back down to Blenheim to look after the office. Jane and Simon have been away on Astrolabe work in Mexico for the last ten days, only arriving back yesterday. They were over there learning about the market, meeting our distributors and doing tastings and events. There is even a possibility that we may try send Durvillea there at some point!
Tim tasting off
While they were over there we have been organising exports and bottlings for our wines, both Astrolabe and Durvillea. Meg and I have also been organising a couple of interviews on Durvillea and the girls that will be coming out in the next few weeks.
As the 2009 Durvillea Sauvignon Blanc, was bottled on Friday afternoon, I went out to Wineworks with Tim to see how it all worked. Before the bottling took place we were given samples of the bottled wine to “taste off” which is essentially just trying the wine from the bottle to check it tastes ok. After that we went down to the bottling line where they had it already to go.
Once we okay’ed it to the guys there, and decided on the height of the label it was all ready to go. We watched a pallet (56 cases) go through to see if there were any issues then we left them to it.
The bottling ran smoothly, and ended up being done ahead of schedule, a very good thing, especially on a Friday. 
This week has been quite busy, with two long weekends in a row coming up (Marlborough Anniversary is the weekend after Labour weekend). There is a lot to make sure you have done by the required dates, in particular, making sure samples will be where they need to be at the right time, and ensuring that all the export documents are completeted.
On a more exciting note, Meg and the girls are coming home for the weekend as it is Simon’s 50th, so I am looking forward to catching up with them.