Monthly Report - November 2019

 Mark in action at Gourmet Escape...

We were in Booth B3 – placed between LS Merchants and Lenton Brae who are other Margaret River wineries.  LS sells “new wave” wines, and the Tomlinson’s at Lenton Brae sell “old wave” wines – thus we were perfectly placed with a chance to sway the swinging voters.  Our booth was decorated by two large painted barrels (my daughter Abi is the talented one here), and me, Tim and Marjory (plus 2 blackboards that we realized we had to write on with great big chunky chalks, oh the drama) got to stand there for 7 hours a day for two days.  And over the two days we served upwards of 4-500 samples, told the Blue Poles origin story 2-300 times, Tim spilt ~100+ pours on the tabletop, I ordered the wrong coffee once, and by the end we were all three absolutely knackered.
 
Marjory completed a little Vlog of the weekend and has it up on her YouTube channel.  For those with very sharp eyes, they will note there is evidence of Tim purchasing said “wrong” coffee and walking back with a tricksy smirk knowing the degree of distraught this will cause me upon recognizing my mistake (fast forward to 2m 23s for those impatient ones out there…).

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One of my little tasks during the weekend was to attend one of those “tutored” wine tastings, predominantly run by Gary Walsh (aka Withnail).  He had a gaggle of wine makers and owners come in and discuss their wines with a group of guys that liked the thought of swilling the most expensive wines from the region while putting up with Gary and us.  I did find it a bit odd to be hanging out with the wine makers from round town in this setting – but I did enjoy their takes, and to hear them talking about the geology of the area without really knowing too much about it, it reminded me of being on a mine site listening to mine engineers being the “geos” – such fond memories.  The discussions of their wines while tiptoeing around the other excellent wines from the same variety on the table was also entertaining – “Chardonnay - Fight To The Death - Tasting” I say!
 
So everyone, what did we learn from being the promoters of our promotion?
 

1. Have a large volume of white wine for tasting on a warm mid-November event!  We only had a few cases of our old Viognier (good thinking Tim!), and it was the hit on the Saturday by selling out pretty much by the end of the day.

2. Blue Poles is still pretty unknown by the public – understandable I guess as we aren’t in Liquorland or Dan Murphy’s, but from our bubble it was a bit of a wake-up call.  It isn’t that we weren’t expecting it, but we were thinking we had a bit more name recognition out there – something to work on for sure.

3. It is hard to sell fine wine at an event where people are generally there to have a good time and wander about.  We did have a couple of self-adorned wine experts come and try our wines – a privilege to see a “wine wanker” in the wild, a truly remarkable sight, like spotting a peacock in full display without any tail feathers (…spoken softly with a David Attenborough lilt).  But overall, lots of positive comments and lots of new mailing list members (who may in fact be reading this report for the very first time – welcome!).

4. Fans of Blue Poles are really really big fans of Blue Poles.  Those who have got on board and bought our wines over the years and were at the event came across and saw us and gave us a lot of heart by saying how much they love our wines.  To those folks I say two big thumbs up, you make us very happy!

5. It is hard work.  We were all exhausted after going through the whole process for the first time (setting up, taking down, preparing competitions, and running the booth between the 3 of us – which was only 2 often as I was gallivanting  around with the wine makers and Withnail in the “tutored” tastings).

 
Will we be back next year?  Hard to know really – we need to have a wine that suits the event.  If the “Lost on Mars” Marsanne collaboration with Amato Vino works well this vintage and is bottled in time, then that could be a good wine for running with, as well as a new Shiraz and of course our more well-known Merlot and Cabernet Franc wines.  Let’s just say it is the swirl on your banking app at the moment – waiting to be logged in.
 
 
Uplifting…
 
One job that always catches me out with how long it takes to do by yourself is wire lifting in the vineyard.  Every time I do it in early-mid November, I think to myself, that’s a bit longer than I thought, I must give myself more time next year.  And I never do.  This monthly report is being written under a mosquito net in Gaoual, Guinea in West Africa – I arrived here 3 days ago after a 33-hour flight including layovers and a 16-hour drive from Conakry to Gaoual.  I left on the Monday, and on the Sunday before my flight Marjory and I went to the vineyard to finish the wires and tidy up some vines that needed some love and attention.  What was meant to be a 4-hour job became 6 due to my continuing miscalculations, and we finished with the sun setting out to the west.  Beautiful day of course, but one heck of a long walk and super tiring.  All finished now (thanks Marj!), and looking lovely out there – haven’t seen this much growth in the Merlot vines for many years and I think all the hard work put in by the team of three (John our Viticulturist, Marjory and I) has really paid off; and on top of the healthy Merlot, the flower set looks awesome through all the varieties making me very excited for the vintage ahead.

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