It's been a while since I up-dated my Blog page so I thought I would roll all my recent goings-on into one blogg.
The advent of the recent good weather has seen a significant up-turn in sales of both retail and wholesale for Red Field Wines and we have been, quite frankly, run off our feet, which in this current climate is something to be very pleased about. Despite the continued barrage of news of recession we have experienced a steady growth over the last 12 months, despite various set-backs along the way.
At the beginning of the recession most trade press releases suggested that the wine trade would benefit from an increase in people buying slightly more expensive wines to drink at home. The theory being that people would trade up in their wine by off-setting the saving made by not eating out. At the time I remained rather cautious of this over confident statement, as in my experience nobody is immune to the effects of a down-turn in the market. It seems now that I was proved correct as people are now in-fact being ever more careful with their money and looking for "the deals"
Having anticipated this, we at Red Field Wines have over the last 6 months have been activley looking for good value quality wines and have built up a range of entry level wines to offer our customers but at the same time insured they are of an acceptable quality. We all know it's easy to find cheap wine, but keeping an eye on quality must take first place. As we continue to move through this recession we will continue to source good quality low cost wines for our customers.
Notwithstanding that, we are continuing to source new and exciting wines across the whole price range and we recently attended the London International Wine Show in Excel and have a number of new wines to add to our range. We have expanded our range to include wines from India, Croatia and Hungary as part of our plan to provide a more varied and interesting selection for our customers. As a small independent, we feel it is important to provide that little something extra if we are to stand out from the crowd.
Over that last couple of months we have held a number of wine tasting events, which have proved very popular with our customers. Our monthly tastings held on the first Thursday of each month are very well attended and are always fully booked a good couple of months in advance. The most recent tasting where we compared new world wines with old world was great fun and successfully divided the crowd by the end of the evening and even converted some hardened followers of the old world.
Our forthcoming tastings include an Italian tasting, South African tasting and the one I am really looking forward to is our French tasting in October, where we will be travelling down through France trying wines from each region and our friends from the cooking School 'Manna From Devon' will be cooking a regional dish to match each wine from each region. That's one not to miss. Book early to avoid dissapointment.
We recently held a wine tasting for Cancer Research and raised over £200.
Yesterday we met with the producer Marguerite Van Hove from Clos Marguerite in New Zealand who came over to promote her new Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc 2008. I have to say that I have never tasted such a good New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, it was fantastic, very smooth, delicate with a beautiful finish that just went on forever. We will be featuring this wine on our web site very soon and it will be on the shelves not long after.
For those of you who are into such things, I have recently set up a Twitter account and you can follow me by looking for RedFieldWines. Since starting I have a number of followers from all walks of life but mostly from the wine world, including wine writer Oz Clarke and TV's Phillip Schofield who is perhaps less well known for having a truly stunning and quite enviable wine collection. The world of Twitter has allowed me to talk direct to wine producers, writers and drinkers all around the world and share in interesting and sometimes unusual facts about wine. So if you want to join in please feel free, but I apologise now for some of the more obscure conversations you may encounter.
For those of you more local to us you will soon be hearing about us on the radio as we start an add campaign tomorrow so listen out for us on Palm FM 105.5. Just recently Sharon did a live spot on the radio promoting the aforementioned charity tasting and discussed wines with the presenter. I have to say she did very well and has perhaps missed her vocation in life, she has agreat voice for radio, whereas I have a great face for radio.......
Well that's about it for now. Thank you for taking the time to read this rambling blogg and please feel free to comment.
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