Current All Blacks, rugby's world champions, are not the only ones with smiles on their faces.
John Ashworth is wearing one too, as no doubt are Andy Dalton and Gary Knight who were the other members of the AB's formidable front row in the 1970s-80s -- tough nuts who now decorate the label of a gold medal pinot  noir.
But that's only part of the story and the All Blacks connection.
​The wine is made by Ashworth's son Leith for what is now a family business that grew out of Dad's discovery of pinot noir during an All Black tour to France.
He reckons it went ''straight to his toes'' and inspired him when he and his wife Jo sold their farm in Canterbury in 1985 to look for a property where they could grow some grapes as well.
Takapau, about an hour south of the main grape-growing area in Hawke's Bay might not have seemed the best choice for some, but Ashworth happily followed the advice of the late Sir Richard Harrison, a former Speaker in the New Zealand Parliament, who had been growing pinot on his property, nearer the Ruahine Range, for a number of years.
Reassured by Villa Maria's interest in the same general area Ashworth planted pinot noir around his home near the junction of two highways on the Takapau Plains and then across road where vineyards have since been developed to grow more pinot, aromatic whites and chardonnay.
The set-up also now includes a rustic cellar door  which was last year voted Hawke's Bay's best.
Junction Wines have also achieved a great deal more success (including a number of other gold medals for pinot noir) than many ever thought they would or could and a gold medal at New Zealand's most prestigious wine show certainly confirms that they demand attention.
The gold medal-winning 2014 Possession Pinot Noir (all wines are identified by terms used in rugby) is available . from the cellar door or online. It sells at a very tempting $25 a bottle.

No.Of  course you can't and it's about time that producers, winemakers, judges and writers who suggest that you can got real.
Associating wine's perceived minerality with it's origin is a load of nonsense -- that from a geologist Alex Maltman, formerly a professor at Aberystwyth University in Wales, who has been reading about wine for 40 years and growing grapes and making it for 30.
Whatever “minerality” is in wines, it is not the taste of vineyard minerals, he says..
Any perceived connection is ä "romantic myth." because there is just no evidence to make the connection.
So what is it then that influences so many to do so?
A good question and one which is under investigation by New Zealand scientist Dr Wendy Parr, of Lincoln University who says the perception of minerality in wine is not a figment of tasters' imagination, but the source of the perception remains a mystery.
Dr Parr recently collaborated with scientists in France and at Plant and Research in New Zealand, to see if wine professionals at either ends of the earth perceived the same so-called minerality, particulalrly in sauvignon blanc.
Samples were served blind in opaque, standardised glasses in unique order for each if the participants who evaluated the wines by palate (taste and mouth-feel) alone, smell alone and both palate and smell together.
The result: Minerality was perceived by both groups in all cases, and was consistently associated with several wine characteristics  -- citrus for example. In fact there were more similarities in perception between the groups than differences, implying that wine professionals share a mental construct of the ‘mineral’ concept, as it applies to sauvignon blanc at least.
But the source of this perception still remains a mystery.
Is it to do with acidity, with sulphide reduction as a result of the widespread use of screwcaps, or is it the absence of perceived flavour in the wine?
For the moment the latter offers the best explanation.
"In the absence of other flavours, it appears that wine is more likely to be referred to as mineral," says Dr Parr whose team will continue the study by looking at certain aspects of wine's chemical composition.
Meantime I'll go along with with the noted British winewriter Andrew Jefford even though I am not entirely happy, as he is, about using ‘mineral’, ‘stone’ or ‘earth’ --- in a strictly metaphorical sense, of course --- to allude to what he calls "a certain sensorial repertoire we associate with worked earth or rocks, just as we use cat’s pee, cream or cassis in a similar metaphorical sense."
"The problem with wielding these metaphors, though, is that if I/we describe a wine whose vine is growing in slate as ‘slatey’, the metaphor is quickly gobbled up by the literal image, and the trusting reader assumes a direct line of transmission.
"We need to wield these terms with care."
Or not at all.