Monthly Archives: November 2009

On the road

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Week Two: Dublin

We are on the train from Limerick on the way back to Dublin. We travelled down this morning,  which took about 3 hours. Now Limerick is an ancient city formerly inhabited by Vikings and more recently by Frank McCourt of Angela’s Ashes fame.

obriens crew and girls
Some of the O’Briens staff with the family at an Astrolabe tasting

We are here to launch Durvillea with the O’Briens Wholesale team. Durvillea will be a restaurant brand in Ireland. It is a challenging market in these times but Mike Curran is doing a great job and we wish him well. The weather today in Limerick is also challenging. It has been raining for a week and there has been a lot of flooding and road closures. Tonight the Shannon river is expected to flood and conditions are expected to worsen. In spite of this it has been great to begin in this market and to get to know Mike, Lynne Coyle the Head Buyer for O’Briens, and of course Kevin O’Brien. So here we are on the train with a bag of lovely Irish cheese and crackers, a bottle of Rioja left over from the tasting and 5 paper cups. We can’t wait to come back. 

critics
Jane and Arabella making tasting notes!

While we are off on our Durvillea journey Simon is in Dublin doing a tasting at the Blackrock O’Briens store. Last night we all attended another tasting at the Westbury Hotel for about 100 O’Briens loyal customers. It was the first time the girls heard their dear old dad talk formally about the wines to an audience.  Tomorrow it is a winemaker’s lunch at the Royal Irish Yacht Club and then Simon is presenting a masterclass at the Good Food Show.

Tomorrow is our last day in Dublin. We head of in separate directions on Saturday. Meg and Henry head off to Liverpool and London. Arabella, Libby, Simon and I are off to Paris for the weekend. On Monday Simon is off to Perth to meet Jason and fly the Astrolabe flag for the first time in Western Australia. The girls and I are meeting up in London and I will spend a couple of days in the trade, visiting customers.

Dublin is such a fantastic market for us.  O’Briens  import us into Ireland and distribute us through their 28 stores and now Durvillea through the wholesale division. They are terrific stores and a wonderful family based company. We enjoy working with them all. Coming here is like visiting old friends and we have grown very fond of the city of Dublin.

-          Jane.

On the road again

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Durvillea on tour: Week One, Shanghai

Over the next couple of weeks I will be blogging from afar and today [actually the 19th of November - Meg] I am in Shanghai, China. Simon, Jason, and I arrived a couple of days ago and have been catching up with our distributor William Feng. This is my first time in China and it is fascinating. Firstly Shanghai is a big modern city with amazing buildings. We have had a wander about the city center with William and his friend Queenie as our guides, both William and Queenie were educated in New Zealand.

It has occurred to me that this is the first time I have visited a communist country. Shanghai bears no resemblance to the Pearl Buck books I read as teenager, or more lately Wild Swans. There is no visible sign of Mao or the Cultural Revolution. It is modern, bustling, and downtown surprisingly European. When we went out to look at the wine and spirit expo it was all a bit grey. Shanghai is preparing for a World Expo next year and there is construction happening everywhere.

We did visit a beautiful temple downtown and a beautiful older part of the city, Yu Gardens. The traditional architecture was lovely. The highlight and greatest challenge was food. Each day William and his friends Harry and Queenie took us to a different restaurant. The most different from any experience of Chinese food I had had before was the hotpot restaurant. As we waited for a table we were offered plum juice, a shoe shine or to have our nails done with fantastical nail art. We were entertained by acrobatic noodle making. The noodles were stretched and tossed with twirling movements like the ribbons in rhythmic gymnastics. The men drank whiskey with dinner and I tried warm black soybean milk which I was not fond of. Set into the table were two chafing dishes in which we cooked our food. One was chilli based and the other began with mushrooms. The first addition was chucks of ducks blood which I tried and tasted like pate. Then various meats, greens and seafood were added. The fine little white mushrooms were delicious but I just couldn’t do the pigs brains.

Harry, William’s friend drove us about which was amazing as the traffic is crazy as you can expect in a city of 20 million. I find riding to work in little old Blenheim a challenge but bicycle riding in Shanghai is death defying. However they do have cycle lanes. I think this is fundamental to making cycling safer and a real alternative needed at home. The pollution was bad and this makes me despair for our planet but as I sit on an aircraft flying across the world I am conscious that I should remember the old “people in glass houses” moral.

This is another emerging market for us and our first container has landed. We attended a function at New Zealand Central which is run by New Zealand Trade and Enterprise and everyone is very upbeat about the opportunities in China. (Incidentally we had fantastic nibbles whipped up by Martin Bosley who is a great supporter of Astrolabe in Wellington). We felt we were in good hands with William and it was another amazing opportunity to visit another country.

So now I am flying over Russia and we will be in Dublin tonight.

The next contingent leave today. Henry and Meg fly out from Wellington tonight and we will meet them in Dublin tomorrow night. It is so exciting.

- Jane

Sophie’s Wrap Up

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nelson tastingThis week I have been manning the office alone as Simon, Jane and Jason have been in Shanghai for a trade show. Jason is now his way home, while Jane and Simon are en route to Ireland, where they are to be joined by the girls to launch Durvillea Wines next week.

However, being the only one in the office it has not been dull, I have been very busy!

Last week I went over to visit our Nelson customers to see how the were going, and if they needed anything before the Christmas rush. I also did a tasting at Richmond Fresh Choice, who have been very supportive of Durvillea, since we released it. The tasting was a success and a lot of people seemed to very interested in our Pinot Grigio (Pinot Grigio is an Italian style of wine, it is still made with the Pinot Gris varietal, but it is made in a dryer and leaner style- a style that Simon is interested in)

One of the things I have also been busy with this week, that we are all extremely excited about has been organising and finalising details with Fabel, who are the company that put on Sounday. We have organised to be their exclusive wine partner for the event next year.
Sounday_backgrnd

Sounday 2010 is going to be held on the 30 January 2010 at Hagley Park 10am- 7pm, the line up has not been released yet, but I will keep you all up to date and provide a link to buy tickets when they are available.

This week it has warmed up in Marlborough, which our viticulturist Jeremy is verfirst grapesy happy about as it has started to encourage some growth with the grapes. So far it has been rather cool, so growth has not been very rapid, however already with a few warm days and some rain he is starting to see some growth.

Currently we are in the pre flowering growth of the cycle. The photo here shows the bunches pre flowering and they are called inflorescenses, from here they will flower in a couple of weeks and then set, turning into bunches of grapes. At this time of year it is important to shoot position this is to maximise light interception (increase photosynthecity of the plant) and to and lay the foundation for the canopy of the vine for the rest of season.

As a lot goes on in the next few months in the vineyard I thought I would give you a wee update every couple of weeks so you can see exactly what stage of the growth process we are at.

It is a beautiful evening here in Marlborough today, so I think it must be time to head out for a drink!
- Jane, Simon and Meg, I hope you have a good trip to Ireland, I am dropping Libby and Bella at the airport Sunday to join you! Sophie

Down on the farm – Home at last

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It has been a ridiculous month. Mexico, Simon’s birthday and then Marlborough Wine Weekend. I am tired and happy to be home…for a little while.

Firstly a word about the birthday. For me to have so many family and friends together and to have such a great night was overwhelming and fabulous. Also lots of silly dancing. To my girls (and Genevieve you get included here), my sister Nicki, Sophie, Aunt Maureen, Liz Morgan you are wonderful women who made it work and of course Vicky and Janet the ladies in the kitchen. Simon isn’t just a great winemaker he is also a good chap. We should celebrate more often.

So post events I have time work in the garden and Monday was a public holiday and I had a terrific day weeding and pottering in the vege garden. The tomatoes and broad beans are in flower, strawberries and raspberries are forming and weeds are flourishing. My main concern is to weed and mulch as we are away in November. In the flower garden the irises are glorious and roses beginning to bloom.

However roses are a constant challenge as I am determined not to spray. The roses look terrific at this time of year in the full flush of new leaves and blooms and then they succumb to disease. My current problem is scale.Scale treated with olive oil

On a suggestion from a friend I took the left over olive oil from the party and painted it on the stems with an old pastry brush. The results are fantastic. The scale has died and healthy systems have emerged. I am encouraged.

The young chickens are broody. I have lifted them each day but it is amazing how drugged they appear. They are completely passive and let me carry them about. I have checked out the chicken blogs and it would appear I need to get them off their warm, snug nesting box and lower their body temperature. IMG_0711
Tomorrow they we go into the more spartan isolation unit (aka dog run). However the other broody hen is Widow Twanky, our lady pheasant, who is living amonst the rhodenrodens and is currently sitting on 7 eggs. I shall leave her to fruitless task.IMG_0715
My latest project is to make seaweed soup for the garden. On Wednesday Simon and I headed down to Ward Beach and collected some Durvillea. Ward Beach is very beautiful and Durvillea flourishes there. I love stony South Island beaches. So we hauled some durvillea ashore, bundled it into the truck and headed home. I chopped it up into a half wine barrel and added some comfrey. Now it is steeping.IMG_0710IMG_0688
The vineyard is full leaf and Nick is busy bud rubbing. Arabella and Libby will be joining him in the vineyard when we get back from Ireland. Durvillea is being launched in Ireland in 2 weeks so we are all very excited to be heading over there. Hopefully all those alders we planted will help off set the carbon emissions. So the next blog from me will be from Dublin.

Sophie’s Wrap Up

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In Marlborough we are very lucky to have two consecutive long weekends, we have Labour weekend and then the following weekend is another long weekend due to Marlborough anniversary falling on Monday 1st November.

Before I carry on I must let you know that this weeks blog seems to be particularly Astrolabe based!

Having a short week after Simon’s party weekend was quite nice, although it meant we were very busy preparing for Marlborough Wine Weekend (a bi- annual wine event held on anniversay weekend http://www.wine-marlborough.co.nz/wineweekend/ )This event is a fantastic weekend to showcase the best that our region has to offer in the way of wine and food! As it is such a great event we brought six people over to thank them for their support that they have shown us over the years. This year we brought over Ian and Tim from United Cellars Sydney after they sold the most Astrolabe wine  during a promotion we held over there. We also brought down Mike and his wife Berni from New Plymouth and Andy and Braddon up from Christchurch, who are all very loyal supporters of the Astrolabe brand.

One of the many beautiful spots for the Marlborough weekendThe event ran from Friday to Sunday and was jam packed with tastings and other events in many different beautiful spots around Marlborough. We finished it off for our guests on Sunday by having them out to Astrolabe Farm for a big brunch and champagne before they all flew off to their respective locations.

On Monday afternoon I flew up to Auckland for Republic furniture’s 10th birthday party where Astrolabe had sponsored the wine. Bella and I went along as representatives it was a fabulous event to be a part of, the furniture was gorgeous and there was a great turn out of people.

The entertainment was also a highlight……

Entertainment at Republic

Entertainment at Republic

The rest of the week seems to have flown past, we have been very busy in the office with many many first of the month orders to be put through! And on Wednesday Jo Burzynska talked about our brand use of twitter and recommended us in the VIVA magazine of the New Zealand Herald- which incidentally no one in Blenheim stocks! Had to get a copy from someone off twitter! (see our facebook fan page for the article if your city/town does also not get the Herald…)

With all of this going on I have also been organising to go over to Nelson for a day next week to see our restaurants and retailers, and am trying to tee up a few Durvillea tastings while I am over there.

It is a beautiful day here today, so fingers crossed it continues into the weekend, especially as I am moving flats tomorrow….