Norm'and Raid - Europ.Raid 2019

Europ’Raid is a car raid, using the mythical 205 from Peugeot. Partaker are people willing to help underprivileged school in distribuing school or sport supplies. This raid begins and end in France. It a 10000 kilometer long itinerary across east Europa, going through 20 countries in 22 days.

Source : Europ’Raid 2019

This trip is done without any assistance from the organisation so the different teams also learn solidarity during the journey.

Each team is to bring 100 kg of school supplies to a remote school from East Europe.

Norm’and Raid team at the Igloo back in June

The Norm’and Raid team from Normandy in France has 3 members :

-       Justine Rebillard – 29 – primary school teacher near our office in Bayeux. She is very interested ini helping other teacher less fortunate. Her project is to share this experience with her future students.

-       Jérome Allain – 34 – his passion for mechanical services is fundamental for this as there is only limited assistance during the journey.

-       Azélie Oliver – 32 – is joining the adventure to support the schools and also for the exchanges between different people and cultures.

To help them in this project, Joanne and Alistair have helped them financing this project. In return, you can see on the car the logos of two projects : Alpasión and L’Igloo de Sallen.

Goodbye to M Restaurants

This week, Alistair and I attended a party at M Restaurant in Victoria. It was a thank you to all the investors who have now been bought out as M moves on to new pastures. It has been a good run and we have really enjoyed being a part of the new and exciting project that was just an idea of Martin’s when we first joined. This then grew to 3 successful restaurants in the City, Victoria and Twickenham. The final step was a takeover of Gaucho restaurants (Martin’s previous company) and a buyout by a group of Venture capitalists who wanted to merge M and Gaucho under the same ownership. We will continue to go to M whenever we can as it is such an excellent restaurant and it has Alpasion on its wine list!! What could be better?!!

During our investment, we have created wonderful memories and we hope that won’t end.

Family in the den at Victoria

Meeting famous people at charity events

One-year anniversary of M Twickenham

Mum by the open kitchen in Victoria

Combining investments

Brazil forests

We left Mendoza and headed to Curitiba in Brazil. The forest in which we have invested, Araucária, is suffering from an illness that means the trees have not grown properly over the past year and the leaves are visibly shrivelling up.

The forest is now 6 years old and would usually grow for a total of 12 years before being cut down for the wood. However, the advice is that we should cut down the trees now and start again with new trees as these current ones will not grow any more. Unfortunately, they are not worth much in wood either but we don’t have much choice. We visited the forest with Henrique and Juarez who explained the problem and the possible solutions. We will plant new trees - still Eucalyptus - but a different clone which is not susceptible to this disease. The final outcome will still be the same - protecting primary rain forest and providing wood to the paper plants - just with a delay.

With the SLB do Brasil team L-R: Juarez, Stéphane, Matthew, Joanne, Alistair, Henriqué

Visit to Mendoza - Vines of Mendoza

Our third stop was The Vines of Mendoza, just down the road. We spent a quiet afternoon sunbathing and reading before walking through the vineyard to another winery, Giminez Riili, for dinner - a pretty and enjoyable way of working up an appetite!

The following morning was harvest time for us. The harvest at Alpasión was very nearly finished but we were able to “assist” a little with the Petit Verdot and filled 3 boxes under the guidance of Guillermo!

After harvesting, we went into the barrel room to taste some wines with a view to blending some for an “Owners’ Selection”. Following this, we headed down to Karim’s winery to follow him and Guillermo in their normal work of tank tasting. This is done regularly to monitor the progression of the wine as it ferments and develops. It was interesting to do as we started with wines that had been in the tanks the longest and finished with those that were grapes that had recently been put into tanks. These latter tasted very sweet and more like grape juice than wine.

That evening we dined at Siete Fuegos which is in The Vines of Mendoza and is a communal dinner around a large table where food is brought out that has been cooked on 7 different types of fire. We began with empanadas and followed with salt encrusted salmon, sausages, pork, chicken, beef tenderloin, vegetables and finally pineapple (also cooked on the fire). It was all delicious.

The next day was a work day for Alistair as he visited the admin offices of Alpasión and chatted with the team there. Meanwhile, Matthew and I joined the chef at the hotel, Matteo, to learn how to make empanadas. It turns out that it is relatively simple so we will be attempting to recreate the magic at home for a future party!! Obviously it was necessary to test the ones we had made and we even got to keep some for Alistair to try later.

That afternoon, Alistair returned having collected our friend, Stéphane Ledentu, from the airport. He had come to join us before we all headed out the next day to Brazil. We took him for dinner at Alpasión of course so we had one more chance to enjoy Hector’s excellent food.

Visit to Mendoza - Casa de Uco

After breakfast at the Lodge, we headed next door to our neighbours, Casa de Uco for the next 2 nights. Ideally, we would have stayed at Alpasión for our whole trip but another investor had beaten us to it and was there with a number of friends. It gave us a chance to sample the delights of other hotels in the area and we weren’t disappointed. We checked in to the hotel and, since our room wasn’t quite ready, Alistair and Matthew took a quick tour of the property on horseback. After lunch we had an archery session

The rest of the afternoon was relaxing and then it was time for Alistair and Matthew to prepare their bag for a night camping in the mountains! They were picked up by Nino at 6.30pm and they headed off to collect the horses that would take them up into the mountains to spend the night.

After an amazing night - arriving in darkness at camp, building a fire to cook the food and enjoying a bottle of wine, the team came back down and I met them at Nino’s ranch for lunch.

Lunch for 3 Argentinian style….

At the end of the afternoon, Alistair and I walked through the vineyard from Casa de Uco to Alpasión to join Andres and his friends in a wine tasting with Karim that included two new wines that have just been bottled. The Alpasión range now includes a Grand Chardonnay and a Cabernet Sauvignon which I can confirm are delicious and I look forward to being able to enjoy a bottle or two!!

Our final morning at Casa de Uco involved driving up to Manzano Historico with 3 mountain bikes and then riding them back down the mountain to the hotel!! This was invigorating and enabled us to feel as if we were doing a little exercise to combat all the steak and red wine we’d been enjoying!!

Visit to Mendoza - Alpasión

We took the opportunity during the Easter school holidays to take our son, Matthew, to Mendoza to visit the vineyards. Unfortunately he hasn’t yet discovered a taste for wine but that didn’t stop us having a fun time.

After a one night stop in Buenos Aires to acclimatise, we headed to Mendoza and to the Alpasión Lodge for the first 2 nights of the trip. We arrived in the late afternoon, just in time to enjoy the sunset over the magnificent Andes - a view that will never get old. We dined in the restaurant where Hector provided a delicious 4-course dinner accompanied by our wines of course!!

The next morning we were up early to watch the sun come up and the mountains change colour.

Early sunrise as the mountains start to change colour

Our first day began with a visit from three French students who are taking 5 months to discover the wine regions of South America. They are collectively called Raid Wine and can be found on Facebook or on their website https://raidwine.wixsite.com/2019/ where they show how their trip is helping them study the terroir and the effects of climate change. You can see an amazing drone film of the Alpasión vineyard on their Facebook page. During their visit, we walked through the vineyard and went to the barrel room and tasted some of the wines .

The rest of the day was spent relaxing by the pool and finished with another great meal in the restaurant.