In March Olly and I went to Tokyo. It was Olly’s first trip to Tokyo but I’ve been there many times before and just love it. We went there to spend some time with our distributor (Apurevu Trading), present a New Zealand Aromatics Masterclass for sommeliers, talk to some of the key wine media and to accompany our distributor on some key trade visits.
The New Zealand Aromatics Masterclass was a big success with many sommeliers and media attending. Hiroyuki Seino, sommelier from Apicius, helped Olly with the seminar providing a lot of information particularly about the ‘Old World’ wines that we compared with our Misha’s Vineyard examples. Seino-san also had good knowledge of New Zealand through his trip there in February, which included a visit to Misha’s Vineyard of course!
During our time in Tokyo Olly and I also met lots of the key wine media and visited some cool restaurants and bars to present our wines.
On the last evening I went to Aotea Rangi, a restaurant who now carries our range of wines, and offered samples of our wine to the regulars who were dining that evening and met some lovely expats, Judy, Kiren & Denise, who all loved the wines and gave us some great tips for where we should try and get the wines listed. Meanwhile Olly went to the NZ Bar (which is also a restaurant) in Bunkyo-ku where the only wine being served during the evening was Misha’s Vineyard!
I joined Olly at NZ Bar later in the evening and we had a wonderful time with the many guests who came to the bar especially to try the wines. I didn’t realise Japanese could drink so much! We then had fun signing bottles for people and then signing the winemaker’s wall to mark our visit! Please visit the NZ Bar Blog
