This Monday was the last nite in the current series of wine options -which we've been running at the restaurant since 1997. Good friends of ours - the Gerrands and Leighs - were instrumental in starting the options, and for years they organised and ran the tasting, with us merely providing the venue and dinner to follow.

Over the years it has segued into a rather social and very enjoyable happening in the middle of each winter, which we now do for 3 consecqutive Monday nites. Each team now brings its own wine and  questions - eliminating the pressure for anyone to organise the whole thing from scratch - and once we've done the options, we move all the tables into one long table, and have a casual one pot style meal.

Becos our team languishes near the bottom of  the scale, I keep saying that its not competitive, which of course it is, but I've decided with options that  good luck can factor in more than anything. I've learnt not to state anything in definitives, as in : 'this is definitely a...." becos you can be profoundly wrong!; and I've also learnt  that  normally I drink to the label, knowing what I'm about to taste, means that I have preset expectations of what it will taste like.

What I love therfore about the Wine Options experience, is that you can have no preset ideas, beyond the very obvious fact that its a white or a red, and from there you have to work your way thru grape type, area, vintage and vineyard. Its amazing how wrong you can be sometimes!  We have wine makers come, and I've heard them get stuff totally wrong ( I will  mention no names, Steve!), so I'm comfortable with the notion that guesswork has a reasonable amount to do with the process.

Although I'm sure the winning team this year would beg to differ!

One of the huge advantages of being a long established business, in a smallish town, is that we don't have to spend lots of money on advertising to push the name of the restaurant out there. It already is. And so, to stay in contact with our customers,  rather than advertising in various publications, I've been  instead writing a newsletter since the early nineties, which we send out 4 times a year, which includes the cookschool schedule for the next series, but which usually also includes some general chat about what is going on in our lives.

Most people respond to it warmly ( some don't - but you get that, and is always a useful reminder that you can't please all the people all the time!), and I decided along time ago, that it was a much more effective way of knowing that we are talking to our target market.

The mailing list has grown prodigiously over the years, and is now rather large, and many well intentioned people have told me easier, less time consuming ways that I should be doing things. But for me, the notion of good stationery, hand addressed envelopes, and individually signed letters means that we care about the people we're getting in touch with, and therefore I never resent the time imput that it takes. I  can envisage a very high percentage of the people as I write out their names on the envelopes,  and tend to loose myself in all sorts of quiet reveries as I work thru the list. We go back along way with some , and I really value that sense of connection. 

I usually do the envelope addressing over a 2 or 3 week time span, retreating to the sofa in the bar during evenings when my presence on the floor is no longer required; write the letter - which can happen quickly or extremely labouriously, depending on how the creative juices are flowing; and then sign them all once Simpson Print have worked their magic. That takes about a couple of hours, and then we compile them all, ready for the team that come in the next day,  and help to fold, put in envelopes and put stamps on. As the picture below shows, we sit around the table, drink coffee, gossip and work...

Lunch is almost always served apres, and the boxes of letters delivered to the Post shop with a smug sense of satisfaction. I've just finished off the overseas ones - and divided them into the Australia/Rest of the World piles, and I'll take them down to the Post shop tomorrow.

So this blog is to say thankyou to all those friends who've helped over the years with this compiling - the faces vary slightly from time to time, but we have a core of helpers who we appreciate enormously!! Once, Rick, I and the girls did it from whoa to go, and it was not  a happy experience - so I remain eternally grateful to all those who have donated their time over the years!

And now I'd better go back over to the restaurant and make sure theres some paper in the fax machine, becos it begins to hum with c/school applications once the letter hits peoples letterboxes.

We are having an exceptionally quiet nite in the restaurant - an annual occurence becos of the Field Days in Hamilton, this week every year. It used to send me into major spins - thinking that no-one loved us anymore, and as a result we were doomed to destitution, but I've learnt to become a little more pragmatic, and just accept it as one of those cyclical trends that happen, which is just the way it is, and no huffing and puffing on my behalf is going to change!! We did a cookschool today,and I sat down tonite and did a box of envelopes ( ie addressed them) for the next newsletter which is due to be printed next week, so doesn't feel like a complete waste of time

We have a major cocktail function to cater for tomorrow for 300 people, so the guys in the kitchen have used the gaps in time tonite to get 380 tiny beef and guiness pies baked, and 400 lamb empanadas assembled, and 400 prawn tails denuded of the hard tail shell, so time has been used fruitfully!!

But the purpose of this blog is to talk about vanilla -which I think it would be fair to say is my all time favourite aroma. We have a large jar of B grade pods here in the bar, in amongst the other product that we sell, and I love it when someone opens it to extract the number of pods that they want ,becos that incomparable aroma gets released into the air, and I get to savour it all over again. As I mention in every cookschool that Rick uses vanilla pods in - I have the scrapped out pods in either a bottle of vodka as my replacement vanilla essence, or in the can of sugar that I use for baking, and I swear that every time I open that can, I smile, becos the smell of vanilla just makes me want to smile - I love it that much!

We're using it in the current c/school series and people are starting to finally twig on to what a difference the real article makes. We are in the very fortunate postition where people we know well - Jennifer and Garth Boggiss of Reunion Food Co - sell us their vanilla , which they grow in Tonga as part of a joint venture with a village there. They sell it to us at a very reasonable price which means that we are in turn able to pass that on to our customers - $1.40 a pod is pretty good value I figure. We pass a pod once Rick has scrapped it, around in classes, just to let people feel and understand that when they buy vanilla it should be soft and malleable - proof that it is still fresh and therefore still has flavour to extract. Similarly we always stock it in glass, which we believe is the only way to ensure that the air is kept off, and it therefore remains worthwhile purchasing.

I read a book on the subject of vanilla - Vanilla, Travels in search of the Icecream Orchid, by Tim Ecott, which brought alive the whole history of the plant and also the reality of people growing and purchasing it in todays world. Made for fascinating reading, and makes me appreciate even more the way the Boggiss' have allowed us to access such an exceptional product at such exceptional value.

(The last customers have now left  the restaurant - and Rick and I, somewhat unusually are here to close up, and my husband is indicating in no uncertain terms that he's ready to go home, so time to sign off, and depart).

There are 2 grades to vanilla - A and B grade. We use B grade in the restaurant, they are slightly smaller than the A grade, but have the same level of vanillin ( the flavouring), and are incredibly good value. I hate to say it, but once you've encountered the real article there is just no going back - everything else tastes a little bit false, a bit off, a bit like a bottle of corked wine, if you catch my drift!!