Shown in the mid-foreground here is Sam Neill's "Last Chance" vineyard, under bird-nets for the ripening season, near Alexandra, Central Otago, New Zealand. In the distance is the more elevated, craggier, famous "Black Ridge" vineyard of Verdun Burgess, Neill's advisor in acquiring, in 1998, this "Hot" plot for fulfilling Neill's ambition to grow a Pinot Noir that best expresses the greater wine-making potential this variety has to offer through being cultivated on the better-drained ancient alluvial, schist-rock based terrain of the Alexandra-Clyde Basin with its highly advantageous sub-continental climate.

Shown in the mid-foreground here is Sam Neill's "Last Chance" vineyard, under bird-nets for the ripening season, near Alexandra, Central Otago, New Zealand. In the distance is the more elevated, craggier, famous "Black Ridge" vineyard of Verdun Burgess, Neill's advisor in acquiring, in 1998, this "Hot" plot for fulfilling Neill's ambition to grow a Pinot Noir that best expresses the greater wine-making potential this variety has to offer through being cultivated on the better-drained ancient alluvial, schist-rock based terrain of the Alexandra-Clyde Basin with its highly advantageous sub-continental climate.