Horse and carriage, love and marriage, Richebourg and DRC Montrachet – if you grow Pinot Noir it’s a crime not to be making a really cool climate white to go with it. On that charge I’m guilty, unfortunately. And since every plantable inch at Mount Terrible is already under vine, until we’re awarded 99 and I can hike the price up to $450 a bottle, it’s going to stay that way.

But just 30km away is David Ritchie’s Delatite vineyard, where Andy Browning makes a Reserve Chardonnay that deserves 97 at least. I bought some grapes off him last April. Credit where credit is due: eighty percent of a wine is made in the vineyard, but for the residual twenty percent I used a new tight-grain Francois Freres barrel, and for the ferment (unlike Andy) I chose a cultured yeast, because my taste runs more to fresh minerality than funk, and wild ferments make me nervous. It will be interesting to see the difference.

If all goes well we hope to have 300 bottles available some time after Christmas 2015.