Dave and Sophie, Ichi Ni

While in New Zealand Durvillea seems to have more of a retail presence, it seems to be the opposite in Australia, with most of the states agreeing that Durvillea has been going very well as an on- premise wine. The Durvillea Pinot Grigio in particular seemed to be getting alot of interest. While we were only in Australia for two days, we managed to get out to Ichi Ni in St Kilda for dinner on the first night. This is a fantastic restaurant in Melbourne, and it has both Astrolabe and Durvillea on the list.

After a whirlwind trip to Australia it was back to NZ and back to business, there were deadlines for wine competitions to meet for entries and to send stock away, and exports to organise. February seemed to be a very busy month for exports!

The Durvillea Pinot Noir was properly released this month, and already it has had some great reviews, we have even managed to make a review page on the website now- to check it out go to http://www.durvilleawines.co.nz/nice-things-people-are-saying-about-us/ This wine has been well recieved by the retailers, and has been selling very well.

As we approach the middle of March the preparation for vintage is well under way, Simon, Tim and Jeremy are constantly out sampling the different blocks, and assessing the different flavour profiles that each block has. At the moment we are looking to do our first pick for the 2010 Vintage the last week of March, this will be some of our Pinot Noir blocks. The Sauvignon Blanc is further behind, although we are still on track with where we were last vintage. This week the Wairau and Awatere Valley’s were coming in at about 16 – 17 brix (Savvy is normally picked at about 21-22 brix) They are already showing exceptional flavour profiles and we are looking forward to seeing the results, as we continue with the ideal ripening weather of warm days and cool nights.

Durvillea Girl singlet

As all of this is going on, I am still trying to train for the Saint Clair half marathon, last week I attempted my first 10km run, it took me about 75 minutes, and unfortunately I had to run/walk the last 2km. On Saturday just been I tried another long run, this time managing to VERY slowly run the whole way, but my route mapping fell short and it was only 9.2km

Thelma from Newman Graphics just dropped my Durvillea singlet in this afternoon (above) which should really motivate me to go for another run tonight (haven’t been since Saturday) and the run is now only 7 weeks away!! Unfortunately, it is 30 degrees outside, and the idea of a wine seems to be slightly more appealing…. Will see how I go….

You may also find you know some people, so feel free to tag them and encourage them to vote for themselves! Thanks to Karyn, Jonnie, Janelle from Fabel for organising a fabulous day out, and to the great line up of artists.

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.

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!

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!

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.

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. 

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.