Advance Australia – Starting business with Fesq & Company

“Australia is New Zealand’s premier market for wine” states the latest New Zealand Winegrowers Annual report for the year ending June 2012. Exports of wine from New Zealand totalled $380 million which is 32% of New Zealand’s total export value. Although Misha’s Vineyard wines have been in the Australian market for a couple of years, we haven’t contributed much to those export figures as the wines have only been in a few select locations. We decided it was time to step things up in Australia given we had so many people asking how they could get our wines there! So effective officially on the 1st September, Misha’s Vineyard will be represented by Fesq & Company across the eastern seaboard of Australia. It’s a company that has been around since 1848 and has a very distinguished portfolio that includes such Australian brands as Elderton, Moss Wood, Pierro, Leeuwin Estate, and Best’s, along with some high

profile New Zealand brands including Pegasus Bay and Seresin and a couple of overseas brands like Trimbach. Fesq & Company is focused in the on-premise sector as well as fine wine retailing so you should expect to see Misha’s Vineyard wines in lots of fab restaurants and wine shops soon!

Andy and I flew to Melbourne for the Misha’s induction and met with the Melbourne sales team and took them through our very detailed training program. The training includes some video footage that was shot during a TV program called ‘Thirsty Work’ which recently went to air in New Zealand. Olly our winemaker wasn’t able to make this first visit (as he was the Chairman of New Zealand’s Bragato Wine Awards), but we were still able to let him take the team through the wines via the next best thing – video! After visiting Melbourne we flew to Sydney and conducted our training there and the following day we participated in our first Fesq trade day.

The event was held on the 4th level of the Australian Museum and during the afternoon, Andy and I met many of Sydney’s top sommeliers, restaurant owners and wine retailers. The reaction to our wines was fantastic – we received many compliments on our range of wines which seemed to create a real buzz with the crowd. The event was timed perfectly as we had 3 of our wines featured in the current issue of Australian Gourmet Traveller WINE – the Pinot Gris and Riesling at 95 points and our Verismo Pinot Noir in at 96 points – so I proudly had the magazine at hand during the event.

We just love the team at Fesq – they’re fun but also very dedicated (and experienced) and incredibly professional. We are looking forward to heading over to Australia again next month when Fesq hold their 2012 Winemaker’s Exhibition in Melbourne on Monday 24th September at the Sofitel On Collins http://www.fesq.com.au/events.html

So here’s to seeing more Misha’s Vineyard listings in Australia soon!