They tell me it will look good when finished!

New Grand Entrance (to be) 

Many of you have asked for more information on what we are doing with building extensions and landscaping.

There are quite a few things under way. The tasting room is being extended to cater for the increasing number of visitor who join us for tastings or the incredibly popular 'Grape to Glass'tour. As part of that building project we are also constructing a new grand entrance, so that the first impressions when folk drive up to the winery is both welcoming and attractive. There is also a big deck (almost finished) being built outside the tasting room so tasters can relax and taste in a pleasant location. We will equip the deck with comfortable tables and chairs so tasters can sit and order a platter to enjoys as they do their tasting. With a weather forecast of a long, hot summer to come, I am sure the deck will get plenty of use.

New Steps Up Cliff

Then there is a big project of landscaping down the cliff in front of the restaurant. We are building rock retaining walls, steps, planting new shrubs, building a bridge - the list goes on. The stairs down the cliff are going to look simply stunning: huge cut macrocarpa timbers, in-filled with exposed aggregate, and lit at night. The bridge across the creek will make the lower vineyard area an even more attractive location for weddings and events.

At present the site looks like a construction zone, and as wedding season is almost upon us I am as nervous as our brides that it all be finished on time. I am assured by our builders and landscapers that it will be, but no rain please weather gods!

Well, the fine weather continues. Another lovely day and the chardonnay is racing away. The driveway is now finished, and looks great.

It will certainly make the winery a more popular destination for functions and weddings; as well as simplifying road maintenance (no more potholes) and no more dust nuisance.

Carl was loading the wines for bottling today. He started filling the tanker at 4.00am, so he could have the wine at the bottling plant ready to start at 8.00am. It was all over by 6.00pm and the wine now all bottled and cartooned ready for sale. We will be getting the samples off to our export customers asap, so they can finalise their requirement.

Time to tell you that even busy winery owners need time off!

Leaving Wellington on a cold winter day (about 10 C) we flew to Fiji for 3 weeks holiday. It has been great, as the accompanying images show - warm days (25-30 C) and mild nights (20 C). Very pleasant indeed! Unbelievable as it may appear, it has been hard to leave work totally behind, even though we have a very capable team at the winery. I think when one owns a business, it is almost impossible to totally switch off. It is almost like having a child!!

While we have been away, lots of things have been happening at work; the bottling process mentioned in earlier posts, finalising the 2009 wines and site developments. Most important of these is the sealing of our long gravel drive. No more dust in the café or cellar door, no more mud and potholes in winter and easier access for winery visitors.

To be able to afford to do this after 10 years is a real thrill.

I will include some images of the work in a future post. This improvement will help us sell the winery and cafe for more weddings and functions, an important revenue item for us. We hosted over 20 wedding in each of the last 3 years - all of which were great fun for us and the wedding parties

Vintage Wedding

Saturday 2 May

Where has April gone?! We are now into May and time is flying by. As you can see from the date of this post I am finding it a challenge to update the site every day. With all that is happening time is a scarce commodity. We harvested the Syrah today and I thought in tomorrow’s post, I would look at the differences between Syrah and Shiraz.

Today though I’m on a different subject, as one of the nice things about owning a vineyard is the sheer variety of the things you do. We not only have the vineyard and winery but also a busy Cellar Door and a lovely café/restaurant. As a consequence we host a lot of weddings (over 20 just in the last year) – there was one yesterday and another is being celebrated as I type this. Here are some images from the wedding yesterday – a most amazing cake and a lovely room setting. I have also attached a few shots from earlier ones to give you a feel for how well our beautiful setting works for wedding couples.