Author Archives: Libby

Durvillea Girls on Tour – London Update

Posted on by Libby
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Well! We’ve been home for two weeks but everything has been super hectic so its taken a long time to put up our update from the rest of our trip, as well as what we’ve been up to for the last fortnight.

Carnaby Street, London

London:

We had about a week in London. We had rented an apartment in Bloomsbury, which was great as it was pretty close to a tube station. London is a festive place to be at this time of year, especially around the central city, where there are very impressive Christmas shop windows and street decorations and lights.

We took advantage of some down-time to visit galleries and museums (the V & A, the Tate Modern and the National Gallery) and do some Christmas shopping. Arabella and I even managed to join in a huge climate change march, and marched with the crowd from Trafalgar Square down to Westminster Abbey.

One of the most fun things we did in London was visiting the Winter Wonderland at Hyde Park, which has an ice-skating rink, carnival rides and a traditional German Christmas market. We ate pretzels and donuts, and Arabella and I went on several of the rides while Meg and Jane, being far more boring sophisticated sipped mulled wine and watched from the sidelines.

Christmas treats at Winter Wonderland

Can you spot Libby and Bella?

Jane met with our distributors, Ellis of Richmond, to talk business. On the train to meet them, in a bit of a freaky coincidence, she happened to run into Libby Johns, the daughter of one of our Astrolabe growers!

The next day, all four of us girls (Jane, Meg, Libby and Arabella) traveled out to Richmond to meet the Ellis team. We went out with Mike Webb from Ellis to meet Matthew Curran, who manages a really wonderful hotel, Langshott Manor. Langshott is a fantastic restored 16th century manor house with beautiful gardens. Matthew told us it is particularly popular for weddings, and we could certainly see why. While we were there, we ran through the Astrolabe and Durvillea wines with Matthew and the hotel’s restaurant manager, as they are interested in putting more of the wines on their wine list. We were also lucky enough to eat lunch in the Langshott Manor  restaurant, which was beautiful. We even had our first Christmas fruit mince pies of the season!

Mike & Jane at Langshott Manor

All and all it was a pretty busy week in London.

Over the last two weeks Arabella and I have been home in Blenheim at Astrolabe Farm. Its a busy time in the vineyard, with bud rubbing (removing buds and shoots from the ‘trunk’ part of the vine) and de-lateralling (taking little off shoots off the growing part of the vine to allow more light and energy to reach the fruit-bearing parts), so Arabella and I have been helping Nick with that in the vineyard a bit. As well as that, we’ve been baking up a storm, making shortbread, cheese biscuits, florentines, pastry twists and Christmas cupcakes to give as Astrolabe Christmas gifts. We had the Astrolabe growers’ party last week at the Farm as well.

Now we’re down in Akaroa, catching up with our Waghorn relatives for Christmas. More on that later!

Merry Christmas everyone!

Durvillea Girls on Tour – Irish Update

Posted on by Libby
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Now that we have arrived in London after our (Jane, Simon, Arabella and Libby) whirlwind weekend in Paris, which Arabella will write more about later in the week, I thought I would post a bit of a recap of our Irish trip last week.

Arabella and I arrived in Ireland on Monday evening, some 36ish hours after leaving Blenheim. We joined the rest of the family at the apartment near St Stephens Green in Dublin where we stayed for 5 nights we had in Ireland. 

Dad speaking at the O'Briens Dublin tasting

Dad speaking at the O'Briens Dublin tasting

Tuesday was spent recovering from jetlag and getting our bearings around Dublin, which was especially beautiful with the festive Christmas decorations around the city. Mum and Dad had a Astrolabe dinner meeting, so us girls took advantage of Marks and Spencer’s ridiculously massive selection of pre-made meals for tea. 

On Wednesday evening, after a full day of sightseeing, we were lucky enough to attend a fantastic tasting put on by Astrolabe and Durvillea’s Irish distributor, O’Briens, for around 100 of their best customers, held at the swanky Westbury Hotel in downtown Dublin. While Dad talked the group through the wines, we got a chance to meet several of the O’Briens team, including marketing manager Cora-Jane (who, with her lovely red hair, fit right in with us Durvillea girls!), wine buyer Lynne and co-owner and founder Kevin. It was great to see the strong support in both the customers and the staff at O’Briens for the Astrolabe brand, and we felt very lucky to have such a good team now looking after Durvillea in Ireland as well.

Libby Launch Websize

 

On Thursday we took a train to Limerick. Unfortunately, Ireland has been caught in something of a national disaster, with major flooding in the midlands area, which has caused a lot of damage and closed a lot of roads in and out of Limerick. Luckily, however, the train lines were still operating, so we made it there safely. Our first stop when we arrived in the city was the fantastic new Limerick O’Briens store, managed by Mike Curran who we had met at the tasting in Dublin. Astrolabe is a big seller in the store, and Mike had a big Astrolabe Marlborough Sav display taking pride of place in the middle of the shop, which was great to see! As well as managing the store, Mike is also in charge of the new wholesale venture by O’Briens, which will directly supply restaurants with a range of exclusive wines sourced by O’Briens from around the world. We are excited that our Durvillea wines are part of this new project.

After lunch we joined with Mike, Lynne and Kevin to see and taste the full range of wines that will be launched through the wholesale venture. It was a great opportunity for us not only to discuss Durvillea with the O’Briens team but also to take advantage of Lynne’s wonderful wine knowledge when tasting the other wines, including some from Bordeaux, Côte du Rhone, Chile and Spain. So, despite being in Limerick in the midst of a bit of a civic disaster, we still had a lovely day enjoying some great wines and great company, and feel confident that Mike will be a great ambassador for the Durvillea brand in the Limerick area.

Durvillea girls in Limerick

Durvillea girls in Limerick

On Friday, our last day in Ireland, we got in some last minute sight-seeing, including a great walking tour of Dublin’s History. Mum and Dad were again busy with Astrolabe business, so we had a nice quiet evening on our last night, since we had an (unreasonably!) early start in the morning to head to Paris… but more on that later!

Sláinte chugat (Good health to you!)

- Libby