T’is the season to be jolly… and dress up as elves, reindeer, Santa, Christmas tree decorations, and angels.
Well that’s the way we rolled at our New Zealand Wineries Christmas Party in mid-December.
Donned in our carefully designed hilarious sparkly colourful outfits, we congregated at a local park in Blenheim for a picnic of fish n’ chips, followed by an afternoon of ‘old school shenanigan sports’ involving eggs, spoons, people tying ankles together, sacks, buckets and balls, human wheelbarrows, and a big long rope for the crowd winning Tug of War.
Christmas parties are always so funny, given that the morning is spent in the cellar with everyone working flat out to get a productive amount of work bashed out before the afternoon antics that are to follow.
Costumes are a great way to go for providing immediate team bonding and laughter. Some people actually look really good as elves…….
The wine industry itself is a competitive one. We spend day in and day out perfecting our practices, exploring alternative methods to better our performance in the bottle, and developing strategies to make the whole cog turn as smoothly as possible.
And believe it or not, the same methods were displayed at our sports day. Is it best to shuffle quickly or hop in the sack to reach the finish line as quickly as possible, and what is the best way to throw an egg so your team mate can catch it successfully in order to overcome velocity and potential harmful impact?
What a laugh. And learning work mates’ hidden talents never got boring; their huge talent for hopping gracefully through a hoop while inside a sack, or their grace displayed in a three-legged-race.
After a couple of hours we were all sported out, and had worked up quite a thirst.
Good timing, because we subsequently piled into a shuttle bus and headed to a pub just over the river and out of town. Legendary is their beer garden, awesome beer, and yummy tucker, thanks Grove Town Hotel!
Ironic really, we spend all day making wine and striving for the perfect bottle, but come a social drink like this and the beer is sprinting out the door to our tables, the wine waits patiently and largely unopened! As they say, it takes many a good beer to make good wine…..
Beer and wine consumption is also related to wisdom….
At NZW we have a daily ritual of the newspaper trivia quiz. Come morning smoko, hands wrapped around our cuppas, we answer 10 questions of varying topics from historical world events to names of family members of our political leaders.
So it was only logical to have a giant quiz-off at the pub to wrap up our Christmas party. Again, it was quite a competitive spectacle involving problem solving and strategies. The strategy of people ‘whispering’ the answer in their beer voice was a good one……
It was a great night had by all, and a few chuffed faces at prize giving as gifts of ice cream scoops, bubble blowers, lollies and all other sorts were handed out for ridiculous things.
So here’s to a very merry Christmas, happy New Year, and fabulous festive season from all the tremendous team at NZW. Dress up if you want to, it’s fun…….
