We are grassroot Wine People trying our hand at being Business People, not Business People trying their hand at wine. We have ‘money can’t buy’ experience.
In 2021 Brad and Mark were on their harvesters for their own businesses deep into a hectic vintage. The vintage was much bigger than expected and their customers were going to have to leave fruit on the vine, as they only had contracts for a certain percentage.
No wine lover wants to see good fruit go to waste – especially the guys that put their blood, sweat and tears into the vineyards every day making sure each vine was producing the absolute best quality. The guys were on the phones to each other with running commentary of what was going to be left on the separate vineyards they were in charge of picking.
Comradery with their valued clients is paramount to the success they enjoyed individually, so there and then they decided to see what they could do to help their friends out. They multitasked and worked through their vast network of contacts – selling the fruit (at market price) while they continued to pick beyond the contracted fruit limits.
Using Texta to write on the harvesters windows they made calls to sell the fruit, booked additional trucks to the vineyards sending bins of would be wasted wine gold all over South Australia for processing.
It was win win for the growers and companies in need of more fruit.
Brad and Mark chatted through the pick about what they would have done with the fruit if they had their own wine label.
EKIN’s first ever meeting was had ‘as unofficial and unintended’ as it was. The seed was planted – and the concept of mates working with mates now extended to these 2 mates working together to develop EKIN Wine Co.
