It has been far too long since I posted an update and for that I am sorry.
Time has just passed me by these past weeks as I have been battling to cope with all the work and life admin that’s all landed at once. So in brief, here is what has happened….
Harvest season is over in Tuscany, which is scary to think that this time last year we were only just finishing up as we were being chased around the fields by camera men and women.
While all the harvests were going on my car needed an MOT, yep, how’s that for the worst timing in the world!? Right in the middle of harvest I had to drive all the way back to the UK to get a £45 annual service done. Ah yes, this also coincided with all of my wines shipping back to the UK the day before my MOT expired, and no MOT means no insurance. Oh well, these things are sent to test us, right…?
I headed off to the UK as Carlo drove over from Marche to Tuscany to manage the process of getting the wines out, all the paperwork and the headache that was liaising with multiple suppliers who were all exporting to the UK for the first time.
Back in the UK I caught up with family and friends and tested out some of the wines from the wine club on my close friends. They all gave me two thumbs up which made me breathe a huge sigh of relief. I know they are great wines and I know there is a wonderful story behind the people that make the wines, I just needed to hear it from my biggest critics. The people who are always brutally honest with me! I also managed to get a couple of bottles to the man I respect the most in the wine industry, my old old boss Mike from Number 2 Pound Street. He tried the white wine in the mixed case from month one and he loved it, so that’s all the approval I need. http://www.2poundstreet.com
10 days in the UK and I was heading back to Tuscany, MOT done and a lot less wine in the car haha!
Once back in Tuscany, the wines arrived in Scotland. Yes, that’s where they are being sent out from. Basically, I have two friends who have offered to help me as I am starting out and they are letting us use their shop to store the wine and distribute it from there.
This is how this business has managed to get this far, friends offering to help me out and people working for nothing more than the prospect of a small business being a success in the future and helping out a friend.
As with the wines leaving Italy I needed another hero without a cape to step in and help. This came in the form of Cari who got on a plane from sunny Cornwall and made her way up to Pitlochry to help out. She has been up there a few days and she has been working really hard to ensure all our customers receive their wines and every box goes out with a welcome letter and a thank you note.
And that brings us up to the current day.
I started this business in March, we ran a successful crowdfunding campaign, we bought boutique organic wines for our customers, we shipped them to the UK and we sent them out to people’s houses in October. As my friend told me when I was in a funk this summer “you moved to a country on your own where you don’t speak the language and you don’t really know anyone and you launched a business, that takes some serious balls”.
This is just the beginning, we now have our first month shipped to our customers and we have some more incredible wines lined up for the rest of the year. I will be on a mission to source some wonderful wines for the New Year and to meet some new small producers.
Keep your eye out for our Christmas box too as this will contain the one thing I get asked for the most…..FIZZ!
