“The market wants all kinds of wines.” Flynn gripped his hands tighter. Now that he’d managed to get Euan to talk, he didn’t want to spoil the moment by losing his cool. Neither of them were good at talking without emotion taking over.

“Of course it does.” Euan smiled and began eating again. “But we can’t supply everything.”

“If we don’t try something new every so often, we won’t keep up.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being steady and reliable, Flynn. When people buy Levallier Dell wines they know the quality they’ve come to expect will be there. A lot of value is placed on that and we get a good price for that value.”

“I know. But the soil and topography at the Haystack Block are totally different. The grapes produce a different flavour.” Flynn looked at his hands. His knuckles were going white. He took another deep breath and relaxed his fingers a little. “Wine drinkers are trying all kinds of varieties these days. We need something new to show we’re moving with the times.”

“You’ve got your red blend. It should be ready to bottle soon. It’s promising to be very full bodied and ageable. It will be totally different to any of our other wines.”

“And what about the dry white blend?”

Euan put a piece of chicken in his mouth. He didn’t look up.

“All it needs is a label. I’ve got a few ideas—”

Euan put down his cutlery again and met Flynn’s look. “We usually make that decision together.”

“You said it was my baby.” Anger niggled in his chest. “You didn’t want to have anything to do with a blend.”

“If it’s got the Levallier Dell label on it, I want to know.”

“It doesn’t have any label yet.” Flynn wanted to shout: because I want to come up with something different and not keep the plain old label we use on everything else, but he pressed his lips firmly shut.

“You could sell it as a cleanskin. It seems to be back in fashion at the moment.”

“I don’t want to do that, Euan. It’s a good wine. The semillon has added the weight and flavour. It has sauv blanc aromatics but it’s got backbone. It’s ready to drink now.”

“We need next year’s vintage for the single varietal labels. The merchants want as much as we can supply. That’s why I’ve planted more sauv blanc. We can’t afford to dabble with other things.”