So I forgot to do my blog last week, the reason being that since I was in Brisbane for work I decided to take a couple of days holiday and visit one of my friends down on the Gold Coast. Where I had a fabulous and blissful few days relaxing and catching up with an old school friend.

But enough about that, I will fill you in on whats been going on in the last 10 days or so. So after the Barossa Jason and I flew to Brisbane where we met with the Smashing Bottles boys; Kris, Paul, Phil and Jak.

Smashing Bottles boys, Jak, Phil, Paul and Kris

The first day we were there Jak picked us up and took us round the Brisbane trade. As the whole trip has highlighted, it is just so great to be able to meet the people who are distributing our wine, and to get the chance to see who is selling our products, and who have it on their lists.

These boys are extremely passionate about our wines and it was fantastic to see what restaurants and retail outlets they have managed to get our wines into.

Simon also met us in Brisbane, as he was over doing a new release tasting with NZ Wine with Astrolabe. Simon and I then met up with Libby for breakfast the next morning, before Jason and I went off for the morning with Kris and the afternoon with Phil, doing trade visits and tastings. It seems we have a good scope in Brisbane from the City area, the suburbs, all the way down to Kingsland and up to Noosa.

Durvillea Pinot Grigio at The Wine Emporium, Brisbane

Brisbane was a great way to end a great trip round Australia meeting all of our distributors and getting a chance to see how each market worked. Especially as it was the warmest place we went to, and I was holidaying afterwards!

So after four days in the Gold Coast it was back to Blenheim, to again meet with the Smashing Bottles boys who were over in NZ for the Bledisloe Cup. After a day of looking round Marlborough and visiting our growers vineyards to see where all the wine comes from we took them out to diner to d’Urvilles (where they have Durvillea and Astrolabe on their list).

Being back in the office this week has been great, but busy. We have had the whole team back in the office, which has been great. Lots has been going on, especially as we start to plan more bottlings and the rest of the year.

Breakfast with Simon and Libby at Au Cirque, Brisbane

We are even starting to think about events next year, such as the Marlborough Wine and Food Festival. Next week, my blog will be from Simon, as I am going to get him to write a bit of an update on what is going on out in the winery at the moment, to fill you in on that side of things.

Before I go, a couple of exciting things that happened this week; one was that a container of Durvillea touched down in China. We are excited to see how the wine will go there, and which variety will be more popular, they have taken Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir. The second is that we are getting ready to send a pallet of Durvillea into Denmark!