A busy month with many changes that will affect us in the future. Finally our move to Sweden has been agreed and we can start to think about life in Europe rather than across two continents!

Although we have known for a while that we would be leaving Japan, nothing had been decided until this month. We were both happy and sad about the decision as we have lovely being in Japan and it has given us the opportunity to develop a market for Combebelle there with our importer.

The move will mean that we are both closer to Combebelle and my commute is a lot simpler and less lengthy than before! More importantly, it will mean that Patrick can spend more time in France and enjoy the magic of Combebelle.

It is also about a year since we started working with Ben who has taken over the management of the vineyard from me. This means that I can focus on the sales & marketing more and also hopefully spend more time on my studies! This is working out really well for us and we can see the difference in the vineyard since working with Ben. As most of the work is carried out in the vineyard, this was the most important thing to address after 3 years. We knew we were not getting things done quite right but did not have the experience or knowledge to sort it out ourselves. We also knew that we needed to have someone working for us on a more permanent basis to ensure continuity and quality of the work being carried out.

We have decided also to really push the cellar door sales this year and have added another person to our small team, Amanda, who lives fairly close to Combebelle but more importantly who has a background in Sales & Marketing in the UK wine trade! We have known for a couple of years already how important it is to establish a good cellar door sales strategy as you can make your margins more readily here. It also helps to raise the brand profile of Combebelle locally and abroad as the area attracts thousands of tourists each year. Along with this, we will produce our first flyer! More on that next month!

The pruning has been completed all but the newly grafted plot which Yohanna will do in March. We have decided to prune this as bush vines rather than cordon royat being Grenache. We have had to keep the Syrah Cerisiers as a guyot mainly because of the way it has been "butchered" in the last 2 years (this according to Ben!!) and we may or may not be able to create a cordon here in the future.

We have decided to grub up 2 more plots this year - one is Cabernet Sauvignon which is too old now to graft successfully and the other is a Syrah on the plateau which for the last 3 years has only managed to produce 1,5 tonnes of grapes which is too low and therefore not cost effective for us to keep.

We are now seriously looking at planting again but as the cost for this is around €30,000 and we need to fund the bulk of this in the first year ourselves (we have successfully applied for a grant to cover at least half of this cost which is paid the year after we have planted), we need to make sure that we are not funding the vineyard but that it is paying for itself! We will have to make a definitive decision on this in May/June when we really need to start preparing the land we intend to plant.

In the meantime, the renovation work on the house is continuing. We had a little hiccup at the beginning as one of the builders fell off his ladder into into one of the window doors and badly sprained his ankle. Thankfully, he did not go through the window! And, as you probably have guessed already, we have made some changes and asked for additional things to be done such as removing the mezzanine in what we call our "cathedral" room and which has been a "thorn in my side" since we moved here!

Anyway, the top floor is just about done and I will be moving up there for the duration of the renovation work. I have moved the office there which is nice and cosy but the only snag is that I cannot see/hear visitors arriving so I sometimes get a shock when someone appears at the door!! We must but a door bell in or something otherwise I shall acquire a few more grey hairs than is necessary!