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It’s been a little over two months since the death of Sir Sam Neill, and since then it's been a season of mourning and celebration for the beloved actor and Central Otago farmer.
Sir Sam died on July 13 in Sydney at the age of 78.
The place he called home is a southern slice of absolute paradise - and now spring has sprung on the vines at Two Paddocks Winery.
"The view is stunning as it so often is in Central Otago pretty much every day," general manager Jacqui Murphy told RNZ's Saturday Morning programme ahead of the 2027 vintage.
But first, the vines have to survive the pre-summer frosts.
"As soon as the buds on the vine burst into life and we get those new shoots and new little leaves popping out, that means that we're at the mercy of frost. Frost is the enemy of vines down here… touch wood not too many frosts in our future."
Two Paddocks has already lost most of this season's apricot crop.
"Sam used to make his jam with them, and they're so delicious. And we unfortunately don't have frost protection on our apricots, and we've lost about 80 percent of our crop. I'm talking about four trees, so this is no national disaster, but we're all a bit miffed."
Luckily, she said they still have some “Sam jam lurking around in the cupboard" made by the Jurassic Park star himself.
"He was very generous, as he was in all things. He would come home and love, love making jam. It was one of his hobbies."
Sir Sam did not want Two Paddocks using "nasty" sprays on its fruit, keeping production as organic as possible, Murphy said - which added to the challenges of dealing with the inevitable difficulties of producing good products.
"It is all about having very clever and experienced culturalists.
"The farmers, these sort of culturalists, they often don't get as much glory but they work so hard and they're incredibly skilled at knowing how to actually produce grapes organically."
In addition to viticulture and jam, Sam also enjoyed looking after animals. In 2017, RNZ ran a headline 'Let’s take a moment to appreciate Sam Neill’s beautiful, perfect, pig-filled Twitter account', the story outlining his unconditional love for all kinds of animals.
Last week, the Two Paddocks Instagram account posted a photo of pigs Brian and Amy, saying they were continuing to thrive in his absence.
Amy's father was Anjelica, whom Sir Sam adopted a couple of decades ago and looked after for 18 years before Anjelica's passing in 2024.
"They just became buddies, they were… Angelica was always pleased to see Sam and he would sort of go and sit with him in the paddock and they'd sort of chat away," Murphy said.
"And look, if he put a post about that pig on Instagram it would get thousands and thousands of likes… If he put anything else on of course you'd get a few likes, but you know, that pig was - he was Instagram gold."
Before Sir Sam took it over, the paddocks were a horticultural research farm, Murphy said.
"There were all sorts of weird and wonderful botanicals being grown here, and stone fruit. A lot of plants were then grown to see if they had some commercial feasibility, so there's 38 different varieties of French and English and Italian lavender, for example, and echinacea and licorice root and all sorts of stone fruit and pip fruit…
"Sam bought it and he kept a whole lot of those botanicals and did a whole lot of planting himself, lots of shelter belts.
“His one comment was when he bought the farm, there were no indigenous trees, there were no native trees here. And there were no tuis, no bellbirds, and no songbirds. So he sort of felt that another part of his legacy was sort of the thousands of native plantings that he's done here. And it's brought back the tuis and the bellbirds and the songbirds. So he was really, really delighted about that.
"It made him so happy when he'd walk around the farm. This very much was his special place, his retreat when he got back from, you know, those sort of very busy jobs that he was doing overseas."
He even found time to spruce the place up with art he'd picked up - not from the glitzy galleries you might expect a Hollywood star to frequent, but locals.
"Every time he was back, we'd see him wander down to the clubhouse … he'd have some paintings under his arm, and he'd have a hammer, he would tinker away and put another little piece of art up or take something else away.
"And often these weren't high-value pieces they were, you know, he had a really great eye. A local art valuer told us that he was good at sort of noticing young artists that were early achieving artists, and getting in early.
"So a lot of the art here isn't particularly high value, but it's got a story behind it and a reason why Sam was particularly interested in it."
Currently the private paddock is open to "esteemed members" of the vineyard's Wine Club, but there are plans to open it up for others to enjoy, Murphy said.
"Over summer, we're looking at probably from December onwards, having some tours organised so that we can share Red Bank Farm and Vineyard and people can sort of see what Sam created here… more details to follow."
