It seems like a lifetime ago that in March 2020, our lives as we knew it, suddenly changed with Covid and so did our capacity to do wine tastings. For us, our cellar door had to close, as did our wholesale customer’s restaurants and small bars. Our world contracted and so did our wine sales. So, rather than rolling over and giving up, we thought outside the box, and decided to give wine tasting packs a go. If visitors couldn’t come to our Cellar Door, we could arrive to their front door instead, well our wines could!

Customised At Home Wine Tasting Kits

We came up with a small cardboard box, which could hold 5, 100mL glass bottles, and staying true to our sustainable philosophies, used shredded paper for packing around the bottles inside the box for shipping. This has become our Cellar Door Tasting Pack. Customers can ‘custom make’ their own pack, choosing from a selection of our Single Vineyard Wines (Elevage Sauvignon Blanc, Henry Road Chardonnay, Mademoiselle V Viognier, Odyssey Garden Rose, Tapalinga Shiraz, Long Road Shiraz, Elevation Cabernet Sauvignon, Une Rangee Petit Verdot).

Once you order a Tasting Kit, I contact you back by email to arrange which 5 wines you would like to have in your tasting pack. very similar really to you visiting us in person at Cellar Door! As well as the 5, 100mL bottles of wines, the Tasting Kit includes a set of tasting notes and a discount voucher to use in our on-line story for your first order of 6 or more bottles of wine following the tasting.

The Virtual Wine Tasting Experience

We have now added an extra wine experience onto the wine tasting kits which is an interactive, live but virtual wine tasting experience with myself, the winemaker. These wine tastings go for around 1 hour, and we slowly taste our way though each wine, discussing how each is made, the flavours, the style and the structure, with plenty of time left over to ask questions.

These virtual wine tastings have proved to be incredibly popular! A few weeks ago, we had our first themed wine tasting with our new release wines, the Odyssey Garden range, plus the new vintage Elevage Sauvignon Blanc and Tapalinga (Margaret River) Shiraz. Our second themed virtual tasting is next week, focusing on a variety that is very dear to me, Shiraz.

How to Order Your Wine Tasting Kit

You can order a standard Cellar Door Wine Tasting Pack from our Wine Store. The Tasting Pack plus Virtual Wine Tasting Package is now a fully on-line  bookable tasting experience called the  Virtual Wine Tasting Experience where you can select your Zoom tasting day and time yourself.

There is a 14 day delay between ordering the Kit and setting a date for your virtual tasting with me, to allow sufficient time for your Kit to arrive on your doorstep before the Virtual tasting day.

Once you book, I contact you back by email to arrange which 5 wines you would like to have in your tasting. very similar really to you visiting us in person at Cellar Door!

As well as the 5, 100mL bottles of wines, the Tasting Kit includes a set of tasting notes and a discount voucher to use in our on-line story for your first order of 6 or more bottles of wine following the tasting.

What is the Future for Wine Tasting Kits?

The months of August through to November in 2021 have been HUGE for wine tasting pack orders! Many kits headed to NSW and Victoria, some to SA and the ACT. Who knows what direction this trend may take in the future once covid restrictions ease, but we are enjoying the interest in our wines. I am thoroughly enjoying the zoom virtual tasting sessions, and meeting so many different people around Australia. We are not that isolated after all it seems!

Our third virtual wine tasting is scheduled for early in 2022, I was thinking maybe of doing a collaboration with another small business here in the SW, I have an idea but want to keep it a secret for a little while longer.