Alison: When we were talking earlier you said that you may actually have a smaller crop this year but that it could lead to a better vintage, so there may be a silver lining to the cloud?

Sam: There’s always a silver lining. Yes, you can always work on that in this industry. Certainly, the less amount of grapes a vine produces, the better quality and we’re always balancing between quality and quantity anyway. So yes, actually we can get riper grapes and more concentrated wines from this.

Alison: And very briefly, when will we see some grapes here on the vine?

Sam: well, they’re just going through flower set now and you can see there is some set there on some of the embryo bunches so, yes, they’ll start growing on from now.

Alison: Sam, thank you ever so much. Well, the glass is here and, fingers crossed, the glass will be half full very soon. We need about a hundred days of sunshine to ripen those grapes so we’ve got quite a few more needed down here in West Sussex to make sure there’s a good harvest and a good few bottles of wine later on in the year. Back to you (in the studio).