Fiasco! Local bloke nailed by the The Rock

Especially for the locals – this link will take you to The Rock radio station’s prank  pulled on a Marlburian.  Go there and click on the listen now (Dive tanks story) – actually it’s pretty funny whether you know the guy or not!  Crikey we don’t take any crap here in Blenheim

A little birdie said ‘free wine’

The following pictures are all of bird life I’ve seen around the vineyard over the last few weeks bar one which is an image of the type of bird we sponsor through More Fm.  All of the birds seen around our vines are my own pics except the last one (hat tip doc website )as it flew off before I could click.  We are fortunate to have such diverse birds in our backyard especially when you consider how viticulture has changed the landscape in Marlborough.  Dad has retained some stands of native trees on the property, has planted new trees and has done work on the river – I think that has made a real difference in terms of providing favourable bird habitats.  Anyway to get to the point : a FREE bottle of our new 09 Sav will go out to the first person to correctly  name all six birds - common name is fine .  Be brave – have a crack!   

Fiasco gets arty…

Someone new we have met through Twitter is Martha Craig who makes beautiful kidswear – sold with all sorts of other goodies on her Babylicious website and through her Petone shop named ‘Wanda Harland’.    Martha is also having a go at an art gallery – with Fiasco Wines served at the opening of course!   So if you are in Wellington go and check out Wanda Harland, say Fiasco Wines sent you and she’s sure to give you a discount… mmm probably should’ve okayed that with Martha .   But seriously, I can vouch for the goods Martha sells as I have purchased from her website and was stoked with both the products and the service – online Christmas shopping made easy

Archie heading to his first Tweet Up!

A child of our times …  yes Archie is finalising travel arrangements to attend his first Tweet Up at the grand age of 5 months.  For those of you not familiar with Twitter (stop gasping Aucklanders – there are loads of Mainlanders who still feel tweeting is for birds ) it is kind of like texting but you can do it online and can communicate with a worldwide audience – a ‘tweet up’ is when Twitter users ‘meet up’ in the flesh for a bit of socialising and networking (a tax deductible party ).  The get together is instigated by a Twitter user(s) and then the details are spread via Twitter.  The Christmas Tweet Up is being held on December 4th from 6pm at Deschler’s Bar in Auckland and is being organised by two lovely tweeters, Jayson Bryant  (owner of a fab little wine shop)and Amie McCarron (very talented contemporary artist). 

Archie, Aaron and I are really looking forward to meeting up with many of those we interact with online, it’s always interesting to meet the face behind the avatar .  Tweet ups are a blast and allow folk to easily get to know new people who they’d never have met in their usual social circles - they certainly challenge the viewpoint that computer social interaction causes a drop in real-life socialising. 

We are really fortunate to have been offered accommodation at a friend’s place (thanks so much Amanda and Rob) and as they have four boys, their house comes armed with kid’s stuff – so need to cart portacots etc up the country – yay!

2009 wine is bottled!

Well we are now officially out of 2008 stock and our 2009 wine is bottled and on the shop shelves.  It is a relief to put our first year behind us after coming up against a recession and an oversupply of wine in the market. 

We are stoked with how our ‘09′ wines are tasting -  and of course we aren’t bias .  But then we had expert assistant winemakers – a whoppa thanks to all of you who took part in the blend. 

The big new one for us is our NASA Sauvignon Blanc – No Added Sulfur Around.  It’s summed up by the blurb on the back of the bottle:

“Sometimes we get crazy ideas while we wait around for our beautiful Fiasco fruit to ripen.   How about making a wine without throwing in any of the usual additives and preservatives?  Simply harvest the fruit, coax out the juice, ferment it with yeast, lightly filter, and bottle.  The idea appeared radical but with good clean fruit and careful wine making we knew we could give it a blast.  And so the NASA concept took off –No Added Sulfur Around!  We must confess though – this bottle does contain small amounts of sulphites but only because the wild yeast that arrived in our juice love to produce them naturally.  And we should probably warn you that in time your NASA may form a small amount of sediment -don’t worry its harmless! ”

Reflecting back on this time last year, it’s exciting and encouraging to now have some wine outlets approaching us  – instead of rejecting our approaches – understandably as a then unknown new label.  We still have plenty of work to do in getting our Fiasco name out there – but we are making progress and each little step forward is great for the ole motivation.  It is actually quite scary when you stand in the bottling company watching thousands of bottles come off the bottling line – it’s hard not to have moments of panic and thoughts of -  “Crikey can we sell all this?!”  But this time around we have a steady flow of orders and we are ever grateful to all of you who buy our end product – it’s immensely rewarding  to see our year’s work bottled and a real buzz to know it’s being enjoyed by folk all over NZ and increasingly Australia.   Cheers all!

It’s time to log off…

Once again I find myself apologising for the lack of posts lately – but we are finally back in our place after renovating and we have our own office – yay – no more fiasco paper work all over the kitchen table and beyond!  I should be able to get blogging again.  The only problem now is keeping the kids off the computer.  Finn has just turned eight and scored a ukulele for his birthday… which has led to two problems: he has decided to turn almost anything I say into a song and he models his songs on Phoebe’s (from the tv programme Friends) masterpieces.  I went in to tell him to get off the computer because it was tea time… and before we knew it we were all singing…”It’s time to log off, log off, log off…”  (Sometimes it’s less painful just to sing along, kinda like listening to someone chew gum – better off just joining them!)

Oh and for nostalgia’s sake, here’s a bit of Phoebe…and I see it’s ‘Smelly Cat’ not ‘Alley cat’ – same diff

Serious wine posts pending – we have bottled our 09 wine!!

‘Full on’

One of the reasons we went with the name ‘Fiasco Wines’ is that we wanted something that reflected the action and vibrancy of making wine in Marlborough.  A ‘place name’ label  just seemed too sedentary to do justice to the reality. 

Before gaining first hand knowledge of the industry here, when thinking of winemaking I’d get pictures in my head of  little vineyards on hillsides, people carrying grapes in baskets and a wrinkled old man fluffing around over old barrels doing tastings.  I guess this was based on what I’d heard of Old World winemaking and it all seemed pretty slow paced and somewhat romantic.  But the reality couldn’t be more different.  There is state of the art technology; a myriad of different types of people working in the industry and the year just flies by with all that needs doing.  Harvesting the grapes is all action, with harvesters and wineries operating 24 hours a day throughout March, April and May.  Then there are a massive number of hectares needing pruning and hundreds of workers brought in from overseas to cope with the workload – so June to August is all go.  Then the new spring buds burst in September and frost fighting starts - with frost a very real risk until November.   There is some amazing technology involved in this and those on the job are often up half the night checking data and making the tough decisions on what action to take – helicopters and wind fans are not cheap and their noise causes a stir with the locals.  This time of year is also time to bottle and label the 2009 wines.  Ours are being bottled later this month.  The end of the year is busy for sales – with all the social events that come with Christmas, summer and general celebrations.  So I suggested to Aaron that early 2010 we should have a chance to have a breather and a Fiasco Wines party in the old woolshed on the vineyard.  “Sure,” said Aaron but don’t forget we’ll only be 8 weeks or so from harvest then!

Fiascos in the Sounds

Apologies for the lack of posts lately – we  have gib stoppers and painters in our house at the moment so have evacuated to the Marlborough Sounds.   We have often wondered what it would be like to live here fulltime and this has been our chance to give it a go – Mum & Dad’s bach is boat access only from Havelock and Aaron has been trialling commuting back into Blenheim to the winery a couple of days a week.  The trip takes about an hour and a half from the time you shut the backdoor in town, till you tie up to the end of the jetty here.  We are also trying out mobile broadband on our laptop so that we can keep up with e-mails, wine orders etc. 

And how has it been so far?  Well it goes without saying that we’ve had our share of fiascos – some funny and some not so funny.  Our poor little beagle managed to chomp into bait hanging off Finn’s fishing line and put a barbed fish-hook through her lip.  It was no easy job for Aaron to have to push the hook right through to remove it. Yooowwwwwouch! 

And then there was Aaron’s departure yesterday – it came up really gusty and rainy.  He attempted to row out to the boat  in the dinghy (really putting his Indevin rowing team skills to the test ) and after a long battle of five metres forward, three metres back, one metre sideways – he made it to our fizz boat on the mooring and waved goodbye victoriously.    Five minutes later we hear the sound of the boat returning – alas he is back.  We assumed he must have gotten around the point and decided the sea was too rough.  However the problem was his memory, or should I say his eyesight!  The boat is bobbing about in the small storm with Aaron yelling, “I forgot my car keys!”  “Find my car keys!”  “Can one of the kids bring down the keys?”  After much searching and yelling back and forth, we hear, “Ahhhh, I had them all along” and he takes off – even faster than before! 

But fiascos aside it has been pretty cool hanging out here with the kids.  The weather has been a bit disappointing but we’ve still done a bit of  fishing, hill walking, possum hunting, and lazing in the outdoors hot tub.  We’ve coped with the rain by cooking, playing board games and painting rocks ($2 shop fabric paint works a treat )  At times it feels a bit isolated – times like at night when it’s pitch black, stormy outside and you know you have no way out of here.  But with modern technology it’s really easy to connect.  We have cellphone coverage and the mobile broadband has worked surprisingly well and lets us do plenty (as long as gaming and movies are avoided) - and its free until Feb as part of the plan we’ve signed up to.    We’ve also had visitors over the weekend.  I can now see why folk that live in the Sounds get excited when the mail-boat arrives with supplies.  It was most exciting to see new faces and find new food .   We have a week to go and I hope it doesn’t go too fast.  If you’re out and about in the Sounds or want to be picked up from Havelock to come out for a visit – then let me know, you are most welcome!

Back at the winery it is almost time to bottle our 2009 wine and Aaron is busy getting another export order off to Aussie.  Our sales have picked up there which is encouraging.  Our distributor in Australia tells us those he supplies would love to meet the winemaker so it looks like there might be a trip across the Tasman on the cards.

Fiasco and a Big Mac!

 

You know you’ve made it to the top when your wine is matched with a Big Mac - would have been seriously gutted if we’d been matched to a cheap ol cheeseburger! 

But seriously, why not enjoy a great wine with a takeaway treat?  Loved that good down to earth piece Jayson and thanks for the mention  :-)

Fiasco of the Week – Win Wine!

This is your chance to vent about all that went wrong this week while at the same time being in to win a FREE bottle of Fiasco wine to wind down with .  What we are looking for are stories about those times when, despite your best intentions, things just didn’t go to plan.  You share your fiascos and we’ll share ours! 

 

When we came up with the Fiasco label it was partly because we wanted to acknowledge that real life isn’t all smooth sailing.  The figure standing on the barrel while holding a glass of wine reflects the idea that sometimes we feel like we are running on a barrel  – trying to keep up with everything while searching for enough balance to also keep that glass of wine – to find time to look up, to taste life, to learn, and to enjoy ourselves.  For us, making wine is one ball in a juggling act that often does become a bit of a fiasco – but we have learned to laugh at such times and to enjoy the ride.    We think it’s important not to take ourselves too seriously and to celebrate fiascos – sometimes you just have to laugh!  And of course it helps to know that everyone has their share of fiascos – which should become apparent as we share a few stories.

Before I left Marlborough Girls College on maternity leave we ran an in-house fiasco of the week and it was great fun to hear of everyone’s workplace mishaps – and it often meant ending the week with a smile on my dial and thinking that in comparison to some, my week hadn’t been so disastrous after all!   So those staff from MGC who have been missing the Fiasco of the Week (and the wine!), here’s your chance to get back involved

The rules are simple:

Anyone can participate, although the wine prize must obviously go to someone over 18 years of age.

Use the comments form below this post to  tell us your fiasco – it doesnt matter how minor it may seem, you’d be surprised how much joy can come of hearing of others misfortune

You can nominate someone else or tell your own yarn.

Stories must be true  (albeit colourfully told) and must relate to events that have occured in the week prior as opposed to some time in the distant past.

You may use an alias to remain anonymous.

We will add your e-mail to our ‘Friends of Fiasco’ database and send you our monthly newsletter (you can unsubscribe  easily with no offence taken).

One bottle of wine will be awarded each Friday to a winner selected by yours truly, who is of course open to bribery, flattery and favours   Sorry we can’t post the  winning bottle outside of New Zealand – but we  can hold it for you until you get to this beautiful country of ours!

 

SO GET GOING AND TELL US YOUR FIASCOS – FIRST FREE WINE TO BE AWARDED TO THE BEST FIASCO ON THE LIST IN ONE WEEK’S TIME!

 

Oh and if you’ve had a bad day, take a moment out and sing karaoke at the top of your voice…

And be grateful you’re not in this vid – actually some of these are beyond funny…really shouldn’t still be laughing