If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants
- Isaac Newton
So it was just a few weeks ago when I made the decision to go on this build. The way Habitat works (see – I’m talking like I’m an expert already!) is that Michelle and I pay our own travel expenses, but have to fundraise a certain amount – in this case, about AUD 800 each.
Previous builds that Michelle went on were organized through Habitat Australia and all donations were tax deductible for our Australian friends. We are doing this build with the New Zealand team, so Australian contributors can’t get the tax benefit. On the other hand, the Australian dollar is strong (AUD 1 = NZD 1.24) and it looks really good when you make a donation on the Habitat New Zealand website. Michelle and I have been welcomed by the Kiwi team with open arms.
Fundraising relies on goodwill – that of your donor base, industry partners and those who have gone before you. My “giants”, as Isaac Newton refers to them, are Habitat for Humanity and Michelle Coram (they just know what works and have done it all before) and our industry partners, Spice Kitchen and Grant Burge. My “donor base” is my friends and family, who have been wonderful and supportive.
Michelle has organised dinners over recent years with a great Indian restaurant called the Spice Kitchen (252 Kensington Rd, Leabrook SA) where, on a weeknight, she can book out all or part of the restaurant and people get a generous Indian banquet for $40 ($20 of which goes to Habitat as part of our fundraising and $20 to the restaurant). The restaurant has been very supportive of Habitat in the past and so Michelle decided to organise another dinner there this year.
For my part of the fundraising, I decided to sell wine, working on the theory that wine and lawyers are one of the world’s great pairings (and the vast majority of my friends are lawyers). Fundraising with wine involves getting a one-day liquor license and having all sales take place on that one day.
A couple of years ago, Michelle’s fundraising included wine from Grant Burge, a very nice winery in the Barossa Valley. It was very popular and the H4H group ran out of the wine allotment.
Armed with this information, I went straight to the source – the winery itself. After a few phone calls, I decided a tasting trip to the Barossa was in order (the things we do for charity – *sigh*). The Barossa is only 30-45 minutes from my house but I don’t usually have a good excuse to make the trip. My husband, John and I went up there a couple of weeks ago (I “forced” John to go with me so he could taste the reds, while I decided on the whites). Grant Burge has three cellars doors in the Barossa now and initially we went into the wrong one. I had been told to ask for Caroline and the cellar door folk said that she was at another cellar door. Apparently, we were at the cellar door that sold the more high the really expensive wines (I seem to always be drawn to the expensive stuff – it’s a talent). The cellar door folk were happy for me to taste some of their wines, but I declined (not wanting to spoil my taste buds for the affordable stuff).
We continued to the Grant Burge cellar door on Krondorf Road, passing my personal mecca of Rockfords (a winery known for its beautiful Alicante Bouchet Rose, beautiful Basket Press Shiraz, and amazing Sparkling Shiraz – how I became a ‘member’ there is for another post).
We tasted the cleanskins first, which, as the least expensive, had good fundraising potential. Not bad, but the next level up knocked our socks off. We decided on a 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon, known as the Elena and a 2008 Riesling, known as the Mariage. Even the more expensive range didn’t sway us. After a small markup (to go to Habitat), the wines were a very affordable $12 (red) and $10 (white). We bought a sample selection of eight cases to see how they would be received and we resolved to buy more as orders came in. The winery also offered to ring us if stock got down to about 15 cases of each.
The funny thing about the wines is that they were apparently a cancelled export order – the red was apparently bound for China and the white for Korea. I assume this because of the back labels, which I reproduce here for your amusement.
Besides the obvious Korean and Chinese characters, I think the red wine label reads as if marketed to Chinese men, using lots of adjectives like “strength” and “intense”; nouns like “character”; and verbs like “bursting” and “dominating”. I’d say the marketing people were spot on. Don’t get me wrong – it’s a great drop, especially for the price, but the descriptions just make me laugh. No doubt the white description is good too – sadly, my Korean isn’t up to the task.
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