OK, so I may be a month late, but happy New Year and welcome to 2011!
I’m back in the action after a fun-filled family Christmas break, and we are gearing up for another fantastic vintage here in Marlborough. We are only eight weeks away from picking the first of the Sauvignon Blanc grapes, which are ripening nicely on the vine. We have got most of our vintage staff organised, as usual a great mix of keen budding winemakers from all over the world including Canada, USA, Italy and Argentina. It’s also great to have a few familiar faces back from previous years.
Over the weekend I hosted our lucky competition winner, Evelyn Brady, who won a Kim Crawford experience in Marlborough for her and three friends through a New Zealand based Onecard competition. Evelyn, along with her husband and two friends, enjoyed a limousine ride to the airport, return flights to Marlborough, a helicopter ride over Marlborough vineyards, luxury accommodation at Vintners Retreat and a special day in the winery where I crafted a unique blend of wine for them based on their preferences and tastes. Not bad huh! Meanwhile, I was left on the ground keeping an eye on progress in the winery.
Evelyn loves Sauvignon Blanc, so I created a special blend for them to take home. They had five parcels of wine to choose from and in the end, after a lot of fun and laughter; we went with a blend of two - one that showed some nice tropical fruits and one with lovely fresh cut grass aromas and a good palate weight. The resulting wine showed some really nice, quintessential Marlborough Sauvignon characters - Evelyn thought it was the perfect wine to sit under a tree with in summer and drink a bottle!
“Our Kim Crawford experience was beyond our wildest expectations! It was a superb weekend, we had an absolute ball and I think our sauvignon blanc blend is the best!” Evelyn Brady, Christchurch, New Zealand.
