I have been down in Blenheim this weekend for the annual Marlborough Wine and Food Festival. We had a really good day on Saturday, the festival day. This year we had two tent sites side by side, one each for Astrolabe and Durvillea. Manning the Durvillea tent were Arabella, Jane, one of our Waghorn cousins – Claire, me (Meg). Sophie was also on the Durvillea table most of the day while flitting over to the Astrolabe tent from time to time.

We set up the tent the day before and were very pleased as all the hard work Jane had put in making decorations was well worth it. We went for a green and brown palette for the Durvillea stall and a pretty gothic dark look for the Astrolabe side. The big pile of real life Durvillea seaweed and the handmade pinnies were a particular hit.

We were a little worried when we arrived on site to very heavy rain. It is local Marlborough lore that it never rains on festival day. However the rain cleared up about eleven and the rest of the day was very sunny and hot. Since the temperature was so high our chilled white wines were very popular. There was particular interest in the Pinot Grigio with punters interested in the choice to go with Pinot Grigio rather than the more usual Pinot Gris. There are two reasons that we call it Pinot Grigio, one is that we sell wine in the UK where they are more used to seeing Pinot Grigio’s and the other is a stylistic decision as the winemakers are aiming toward creating a wine more in the Northern Italian style as opposed to a French style.

I really enjoyed the opportunity to talk to people about our wines. It is equally nice introducing the wines to new customers who haven’t heard of us before as it is meeting self described “Durvillea fans”. We also got a chance to catch some of the musical acts. Sophie went to watch Ladi 6, Henry, Claire and I were impressed with Liam Finn and Jane discovered Gin Wigmore. After the festival we packed up and headed back to Astrolabe Farm where Arabella was busy preparing lots of her delicious pizzas. Today I’m hoping that the rain holds off so I can get all the aprons dried!

Jane and Simon are headed down to Gore today for a tasting and Sophie and Jason are off to Melbourne tommorow. As I write this now in the Blenheim office people are busy planning the upcoming harvest with Jeremy our viticulturist and winemaker Tim. Looks like another very busy week for the Astrolabe/Durvillea team. For more photos from the Wine Fest check out our flickr page!

- Meg