Happy New Year

Welcome to 2015!

The last year was a very busy one for us at Helen & Joey Estate and we are very proud of what we have achieved. We have appointed our distributor, Sherwood Estate, and Stu is looking forward to working closely with them to support our wines in the national market. He will be heading to the Gold Coast to present our wines at The Gold Coast Food & Wine Expo. We would love our Gold Coast customers to drop by and taste some of the new releases and have a chat to Stu about the forthcoming 2015 vintage and our plans for this year. New labels have been designed to allow for greater shelf presence and to support our belief of ‘strong, powerful and elegant’. The use of the unicorn has been used across all tiers to further aid our brand development.

We believe the unicorn, as a mythical creature of beauty and strength, epitomises our beliefs and focus on high quality, Yarra Valley wines. 2015 looks to be even busier. Stu is currently establishing a winery at the Spring Lane vineyard. He is awaiting the delivery of a range of small volume tanks which will be installed in the coming weeks. The winery will process 11 tonnes of our top quality fruit. The new winery will allow Stu to lavish the extra care and attention we believe is required to fully bring our fruit to its full potential in the bottle.

The weather has been fairly kind to us of late and our fruit is set to begin the ripening process in the next few weeks. Our other very exciting news is that we are establishing a cellar door facility at the vineyard and are planning a range of events to introduce our customers, new and old, to the new look wines. We are hoping the cellar door will be ready soon so keep your eyes and ears open for further updates regarding its progress. We are also building our markets in China. We have been selling our wines in this market for a few years now. Our intention in 2015 is to continue expanding our markets and to further this aim, we are planning on establishing a marketing arm in China. We are developing a further range, Monoceros, for the Chinese market. Monoceros will represent ‘Freedom and Independence’ and is aimed squarely at the younger generation.

Stu and Meg have spent the last few weeks making the blends for the 2014 Cabernet sauvignon, Merlot, Pinot noir and Cabernet sauvignon-Merlot. We tasted over 100 barrels – not a job for the faint-hearted! The quality of the wines is testament to the great 2014 vintage and the hard work of all our associates. It is lovely to see such classic Yarra Valley characteristics in the wines as we are so proud of our Yarra Valley home. You will have to wait a while before trying these wines as we believe that time in bottle is vital before release onto the market. The 2014 Chardonnay is amazing and worthy of its place in our top Alena range. I suggest you buy more than one bottle of this wine as it will only improve with age. The wine will reward mid-term ageing of 3-5 years and I believe the beautiful mineral and almond meal aromas and flavours will develop into acacia and honeysuckle with time. I would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a happy and healthy 2015 filled with great love, laughter and wine (preferably ours of course!)