Q&A - Melanie Brown, New Zealand Wine Cellar - RB Collection - Award-winning Luxury & Specialist Holidays, Lichfield, Staffordshire

Q&A – Melanie Brown, New Zealand Wine Cellar

Kirsty Taylor

We meet Melanie Brown from the New Zealand Wine Cellar who shares her tips about her home country with us, and a little about wine too!

Where in New Zealand do you come from?
Originally Auckland, but was lucky to complete my apprenticeship in Christchurch, so have the pleasure of experiencing both the North and South Islands.

What brought you to the UK?
Discovery! I wanted to explore new cultures and experience the world, London was the perfect place to base myself to travel and explore this side of the world.

Tell us a little about the New Zealand Cellar?
We’ve got the largest selection of NZ wine in the Northern Hemisphere! Creating an online wine shop of the very best bottles by some of the lesser known producers of New Zealand was ambitious. I wanted to create a portfolio of wines that showcased the integrity of our amazing wine industry and the people within it. Soon after we launched our online offering we opened our first store in Brixton and it’s been astonishing to witness the amazing recognition of New Zealand wine in the UK.

What makes New Zealand wine so special?
I believe NZ wine has character and personality, due to our wonderful climate and special terroir our wines are vibrant and intriguing.

Where is your favourite spot in New Zealand?
This is a ridiculously hard question because New Zealand has almost every landscape the world has to offer in a country similar in size to the UK. However because everyone knows NZ for its majestic alpine, mountains, fiordland – I’d go for the opposite – think pristine white sand, amazing unspoiled beaches and some of the best sailing, diving and coast in Northland. There is an incredible property up there called Eagles Nest on the island of Russell. The view from any of its villas is hard to beat!

What advice would you give a first-time visitor?
For wine lovers, explore the Classic NZ Wine Trail taking you from Hawke’s Bay through to Marlborough via Wellington – Marlborough produces over 70% of New Zealand wine and is the home of Sauvignon Blanc with some incredible wineries – a great place to start. There are a few absolute gems nearby such as the boutique property; Bay of Many Coves in the Queen Charlotte Sounds, Marlborough is more than wine – the Sounds are amazing for sailing, watersports such as kayaking (look out for dolphins!). There are some great walks and cycles along the Queen Charlotte track. The new Marlborough Lodge just opened in November 2016 too.

How about a 2nd or 3rd time visitor?
New Zealand is incredibly diverse, although it’s a small country in size there’s so much to see. Central Otago is the most southerly wine growing region in the world, iconic for Pinot Noir. New Zealand’s adventure capital, Queenstown is the gateway to Otago and there are endless adventures to be had throughout this area and Fiordland. I would recommend organising an exclusive tasting and some ‘meet the winemaker’ experiences, and heading back after a full day out to somewhere like Eichardts Private Hotel in Queenstown, or Matakauri Lodge will top it off!

Food & wine tourism is growing in popularity, why do you think that is and what can one expect on a visit to New Zealand for a themed trip such as this?
I think people want to ‘experience’ rather than just ‘visit’ these days, which is why New Zealand is such a bucket list destination in this regard. People want dining ‘experiences’, it’s more than just the food, and they want to know that it’s local. To understand how exquisite New Zealand’s food & wine product is, you just have to look at our Luxury Lodges of New Zealand – all 28 properties are incredibly unique to its surroundings, so the settings are outstanding, and they’re world class when it comes to the farm to table ethos – local produce and with hosted experiences, complete with incredible wine cellars!

And finally, if you could be anywhere in New Zealand right now, where would it be and why?
Right now, with the madness of 2016, I could do with something that New Zealand does incredibly well – which is the ultimate retreat, away from it all. The epitome of this is Minaret Station, in the Mount Aspiring National Park – luxury chalets only accessible by helicopter in one of the most incredible spots mother nature could offer.

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New Zealand

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Zain Qazi

‘As usual, Sam at RB Collection arranged our recent Iceland/Scotland cruise with attention to every possible detail. He remembered what had worked for us previously and used that knowledge to enhance our experience. No question was too much trouble for either Sam or his colleague Clare. We would not consider anyone else for our holiday arrangements; RB Collection are truly superb!’

Hilary Carroll

Wonderful way to book a wonderful holiday. Such a personalised & attentive approach to helping us find the perfect family holiday! Couldn’t recommend more!!!

Pandora Bahrami

They found us the perfect hotel for our London stay. Exactly the right balance of perfect location, incredible breakfast and they really listened to what we wanted. I even had access to one of London best gyms included in the stay!

Katie May Medley

RB Collections are a wonderful family run firm who welcome you into the family from the first holiday you book with them. My special thanks go to Clare who always ensures my booking runs smoothly and takes the stress out of the process of decisions by ‘knowing’ and implementing my preferences using information she has ascertained from previous bookings. I don’t have to remember…..Clare does it for me.

Janet Goodwin

Having just returned from a fantastic long weekend at Disneyland Paris, we had to leave a review for Sam and the team at RB Collection. They removed all the stress from organising the trip and ensured everything was in place for a truly memorable trip for all the family. We can’t thank them enough and we will certainly be back for future holidays. Our experience has been 10/10 👍🏻

Mike Boyden

Just returned home from a wonderful holiday in Madeira arranged by Sam from RB Collection. Every detail from flights, hotel, transfers, recommended restaurants and "must to do's" was excellent and all documents arrived by post in good time for checking before departing on our holiday. Due to the weather, our journey was delayed by two days. However after contacting RB on the emergency number in the holiday package, all was sorted by the team - an upgraded hotel room at the same hotel, flight, transfers, taking away all the stress from ourselves and allowing us to enjoy our extra two days. One cannot put a price on a phone call and text messages when something unfortunate happens and you feel vulnerable. On our return, the excellent service has continued by Sam and colleagues who are now dealing with the necessary correspondence with the airline company. My husband and I and children at home who were concerned when we were stranded, cannot thank the team at RB enough for their support and professionalism and we are looking forward to many more holidays using the company. Tom & Janet

Tom&Janet Marks

We came to RB Collection with an idea of some of the places we wanted to visit in Rajasthan, India - and they made it all happen, expertly and efficiently. Oliver and Clare were a pleasure to deal with, sorting every aspect and adding their own ideas to really enhance this wonderful trip. They checked in while we were away to make sure everything was going well (which it was) and I knew they'd be on hand if we needed anything. Thank you!

David Page

The purpose of this review isn't to confirm that our holiday was a 5 star experience (which it was, by the way) but it's a review to say that RB Collection's involvement in planning, booking and safety netting our holiday experiences has been truly 5 stars. Are people bothered if my wife and I had a great holiday - I suspect no...... Are people interested in the company that was instrumental in creating 5 star holidays - I suspect yes ......and so it's RB Collection's skills and involvement that get this 5 star rating. As a family we have booked our own holidays almost exclusively by ourselves for 35 years - until a year ago when we used RB Collection's services for the first time to book a holiday to the Ice Hotel in Sweden. We chose to book through them because we had no experience or knowledge of the Ice Hotel and their exclusive Ice Hotel Website was great. Their involvement made all the difference - in particular their personal commitment to making things work and since the first contact, they have been getting to know our travel "needs, wants and likes" more by each contact. Our next holiday was a Silversea Cruise - one that we could easily have booked ourselves, but RB's influence allowed us to save a significant (4 figure!) sum. Reason alone to recommend! Our third and most recent booking with RB was a safari which could not have been a better holiday experience. The reasons for this are as follows: 1. Up until raising the possibility, I knew nothing about safaris i.e. where to go / at what time of year / for how long etc. Within 72 hours of a discussion of a suggestion by me for a Tanzania trip (based on a google AI search), I was infinitely far better informed and after weighing up possibilities, we opted for a Kenyan trip to Amboselli and the Masai Mara. What a brilliant decision! 2. Whilst the travel options were perfect for our particular needs, RB's involvement to seamlessly arrange the multiple transfers on our journey came to the fore. This was particularly evident on coming back from Zanzibar (beach unwind) to Nairobi International, which would have presented a significant challenge had we opted for self booking, due to the (multiple) security & immigration stages. (Yes, of course - we would have negotiated the stages - we're grown ups - we can look after ourselves, but oh my. the loss of wasted heartbeats would have been significant!) Turns out that what was arranged for us was faster than "fast track" and I certainly became aware of lots of people looking enviously towards us and our safari representative as we whizzed by! 3. Photography is an important aspect of our holidays. Good photographic subjects / scenes are our means of ensuring that we're seeing good stuff, which - IMHO - is a main focus of a holiday. Our safari guides had been well briefed about my photography wishes and from the get-go, they discussed what we were looking for from our holiday and so every day we had a mutually planned itinerary for the wildlife that never disappointed. Our guides had been particularly selected from the briefing given by RB pre-travel to the safari people. In a nutshell, RB have changed our attitude to holidays and their associated experiences. In our time with them, we have undertaken holidays that we have never done before and we are now definitely thinking differently about what to do in the future. Add to this, the reassurance and safety net that travel agency booking confers and I think that RB Collection definitely deserves a 5 star review. By the way - we live distant to their location - all of our dealings have been by telephone and email so don't think you need to be locals to use their services.

Colin Scott

A big shout out for RB Collection ….they have done it again !!!! Made our World touring a pleasure AGAIN ….having done the cruising in various parts of the world …the Canada trip…..the India & Nepal trip…& just recently the Hongkong Australia New Zealand trip…it’s like being transported on a Dreamliner !every attention to detail from getting to the airport arriving at the destinations & being picked up & taken to the various types of accomadation ….Thanks Team RB & especially to Sam for this last one 🌴☀️😎

Linda Taylor

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