After sorting out a date with Jensen for the last Saturday in July (he had a packed diary – business meetings all over the place – but, I’d noted, by reading over his shoulder, no mention of a girlfriend anywhere), the plans for the inaugural Butterworth Wines open day took shape with surprising speed.

For the next month, the team pulled together, throwing themselves into the preparations. We’d settled on ten pounds a ticket, which I thought was excellent value for a glass of award-winning sparkling wine and a full day’s entertainment.

In the run-up to the event, Marjorie had been pressed into office duty, going through emails and collating all the orders that had been missed. We had already made a dent in the stock of 2015 vintage that had been sitting in the wine store gathering dust. I gave the job of phoning around some of Ted’s wine society contacts to Betsy. I’d written a list of names and numbers in black marker pen so she could read it and she spent many hours in conversation with wine lovers all across the country, laying it on thick about how unique the open day was going to be. Heart-warmingly, she received many compliments about Ted’s wines from well-wishers who were thrilled to hear that the vineyard was opening to the public for the first time.

Matt had been beyond excited about the event, offering us the use of several marquees and a pop-up bar, complete with a couple of barmen to man it, a fact that had thrilled Marjorie no end. He’d even set up a free prize draw on the bar of the Golden Arrow – first prize being a bottle of Butterworth’s finest – using the promotion to advertise the open day.

We’d also managed to decipher from Ted’s notebook some details about the dosage he had used for the last two years and after a bit of experimentation, Matt and Clare decided they felt brave enough to do a trial with the 2016 vintage so that our open day visitors would get to see our production line in action. It would be another year before this batch of sparkling wine would be ready for sale, but we’d be taking pre-orders and hopefully avoid a repeat of the stock build-up situation that we were currently in.