Ten Foot Tall and Bullet Proof: The Dream Behind Loveblock Wine
There’s no reason why Erica and Kim Crawford had to do Loveblock. Having already found huge success with their eponymous Kim Crawford label – America’s top-selling wine from New Zealand – they could have simply stopped there.
However, for this emblamatic family of the New Zealand wine industry, a new challenge was needed after they sold the Kim Crawford brand to Canadian beverage giant Vincor in 2003.
And so Loveblock was born. Perched high on the hills overlooking Marlborough’s Awatere Valley, the new winery heralds the Crawford’s return to the industry – Kim the fabled winemaker, and Erica the CEO and marketer par excellence.
However, Loveblock is certainly not a re-do, or “Kim Crawford Two” as Forbes describes in its article on the new venture. For one, it not only produces Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris but also Moscato, Gewürztraminer, and Riesling too. However, the main differentiation is partly with the philosophy behind the brand, and partly with the odds of geography stacked high against it.
Those odds, even with the enthusiasm of a new venture, are daunting.
As Forbes describes it, “daunting, as in vineyards at elevations in New Zealand that are so high that no one has grown grapes there before.
“As in, arctic winds blowing in from the South Pole. As in, a plague of bronze beetles that descend on the vineyards, fly toward the sun, and eat literally everything in its path.
“It’s a forbidding climate that the Crawfords have nonetheless coaxed into yielding enough wine and enough hope to keep going.”
“All the elements were against us,” Erica Crawford said. “But it was the dream. You need one of those things. You need to think you’re ten foot tall and bullet proof. You need to think nothing can go wrong.”
“Falling in love with the view was a part of the Loveblock story. As we converted the sheep paddock to plantable land, we took the decision to tackle organics, a cause that is deeply personal to me,” Erica explains on the Loveblock website.
Original article by Cathy Huyghe, Forbes
