BUSY

Mid November is the busiest it ever gets here. It’s also the time I'm at my twitchiest. "Usually we strap Tony down around now", says Simon our Global CEO to Glenn our new UK CEO.

For forty years I have worried every year that Christmas won't happen. Christmas is just so important to us. If it didn't come it would be a disaster.

So as usual I've been crossing fingers, holding breath and pestering everyone for news. But I just heard what I so wanted to hear and now I'm almost back to normal, and can write again.

From Mark Capon:
"Just a wee update on this – yesterday was an absolutely AMAZING day for the Reading team. Outside of Bordeaux EP this was our biggest day ever – with sales of just over £141k.”

Christmas has certainly arrived, it would seem. Our previous best day was £115.6k – so we’ve shown a massive 22% lift in sales.

Certainly worth a sprig of holly, I thought … Mark, I will go cut down all my holly bushes and deck your halls! Thank you and your lovely lot SO much.

But mostly … CUSTOMERS I adore you!

This comes on top of email from buyer Becca Reeves:
"Fantastic news! Spier have been awarded South African Wine Producer of the Year by the IWSC! This is wonderful news for them and so well deserved and I’m thrilled that Tony, Tom and I will be visiting them when we go to South Africa in a couple of weeks’ time. We will come back with some lovely photography, so we can really make a feature of one of our top producers."

Followed up by one from buyer Helen McAvoy:
"Further to Becca’s note, I have looked in more detail at the IWSC winners from last night and found out that we have more to celebrate!

Trapiche were awarded the Argentinean Wine Producer of the Year award
Cono Sur were given the Chilean Wine Producer of the Year award
Lustau were given the Spanish Wine Producer of the Year award
Ridgeview were given the UK Wine Producer of the Year award"

Not a bad week, not bad at all!

We just had a Board Meeting. We had updates on all our campaigns. UK and abroad. Battles … we certainly have. Plenty. But we do seem to be winning a tough old war. More in next diary.