Hi all,

During vintage and the establishment years of Bellwether I would often not know what day of the week it was, or if it was a long weekend, every day was a work day.   As the tourism part of our business grew I started to recognise the long weekends and definitely Easter, because you came in droves.   Easter is well recognised as the single busiest weekend of the year in Coonawarra.   We are usually still doing vintage, our campground is booked out and cellar door is flat out.   It was always chaos but it really helped with the first round of grape payments and our pre-vintage bottling bills.

This will my first Easter off in 25 years.   It will be lovely to breathe out and catch up on sleep, cook and enjoy the Easter egg hunt with my daughter.   I still have ferments to look after and the daily bake of sourdough.

I will miss the annual catch up with good friends slow roasting lamb, I will miss the Coonawarra Hall, Good Friday tea night with fish and chips.   But the lack of Easter income will hurt the most.  

So what can we do virtually?...

Let’s start with Good Friday.   In the morning we will do a live Facebook hook up with Chris Duffy and Emily Salkeld from Small World Bakery (https://www.smallworldbakery.com.au/)

I love everything about what Emily and Chris do. They not only make incredible bread, but we share very similar values, with a focus on flavour, ethics, quality and sustainability.  The great news is their business is booming. We all need some good news, so tune in to hear this extraordinary story about great flour and the humble sour dough loaf.

Those of you who have stayed with us may have tried our sour dough. For the last four months we have been using Small World Bakery whole grain flour - freshly milled by them. 

Then Friday evening we will enjoy our Kelly Menhennett residency from 8pm ACST.  

Visit our Bellwether Facebook page HERE and turn up the volume!

Please be aware that freight company's are overwhelmed at the moment, so delivery times can be much longer than usual.