WINERY AND VINEYARDS

At Charles Melton Wines, great emphasis is placed on the quality of fruit.  All grapes are dry grown and harvested from the winery’s own 50 acres of prime Barossa vineyard land, as well as from a select group of grapegrowers.

Yields are extremely low with often only one tonne to the acre, and the vineyards are truly old with many exceeding 80 years. The oldest source for Nine Popes is a Grenache vineyard well over a century in age.

A range of techniques are employed during the winemaking process. These include: whole bunch fermentation, open fermentation, pigeage and indigenous yeast fermentation. These techniques allow a range of blending options to give the most complete wine, in terms of balance between pure fruit flavours and more earthy/gamey characters.

The dry reds are matured in both French and American Oak, 25% of which are new each year. This gives rise to a cellar style which has a kiss of superb oak character - rather than a thump, and allows the rich fragrance and flavours of old dry grown Barossa vines to move to the fore.

Showing complexity from this range of vineyard sites and vinification techniques, the wines have demonstrated over the last decade an ability to cellar gracefully into mature examples of the finest Barossa styles.

Answers to some frequently-asked questions

� What’s so special about the vines/wines of the Barossa?

Because the Barossa has been spared the ravages of phylloxera, some of the Valley’s vines are aged in excess of 130 years old.

This gives them decades of stored carbohydrates/energy, which enables them to survive without irrigation - and thus produce berries with intense, concentrated fruit flavours. These berries have a natural sweetness (even when fermented bone-dry) that is unrivalled in the world.


� Old vines vs young vines

Vine age has some minor bearing on increased quality if all other things are equal.

But, in vineyards as in life, equality is nigh on impossible. We place far greater weight on vineyard yield as a quality parameter.

The other key factor in quality assessment is vine health, and this is where vine age gives a distinct advantage. In those years where the weather conditions give rise to water stress (or rather “lack of water� stress), the old vines with their deep-rooted characteristics cope far more smoothly than shallow-rooted young vines, especially shallow-rooted irrigated vines where the root system is kept closer to the soil surface by frequent waterings.

Whilst a small amount of stress can be beneficial, highly stressed vines do not produce well balanced fruit.


� Where are the vineyards – and how old are they?

Charles Melton Wines owns approximately 50 acres of prime Barossa Vineyard, including:

   - Old bushvine Grenache, and younger Shiraz surrounds the winery and cellar door in Krondorf Road in Tanunda. This site is slightly elevated, with gully breezes from the Barossa ranges only metres away providing a cooling effect.
 
  - Grenache and Shiraz surrounds the Meltons’ home “Woodlandsâ€�. This is near Lyndoch (approximately 15 km south of Tanunda), and would be regarded as a milder site than those situated on the Barossa Valley Floor. This is due to a slightly higher level of humidity giving rise to fresher, more aromatic flavours.

Charlie and Virginia also source fruit from a select group of Barossa grape growers, many of whom have been growers for the Meltons since they started out 20 years ago. These growers include: 

   - Foxy’s vineyard is literally over the fence from the Charles Melton winery. She grows 12 acres of Shiraz and two acres of Cabernet.
 
  - Peter Boehm (who Charlie worked with in the early days at Saltram) has 2.5 acres of old Shiraz, some younger Shiraz and old Grenache – and a ‘splash’ of Pinot Noir for the Rose of Virginia. 

   Yields from all the Charles Melton owned and contracted vineyards are extremely low – on average about 1.5 tonnes to the acre.


� Why Barossa?

There are a number of advantages in being in the Barossa, both technical and also in a marketing sense.

The Barossa terroir is both benign and varied at the same time. Benign in a sense that we only occasionally suffer the worst of nature (’69 or ’74), and varied in that the terrain of the Barossa offers such a range of microclimates, from the high hills to the rich deep loams of the river flats on the Valley floor.

For the rich, plush style that Charles Melton is known, the Barossa is ideal because we will always get the ripeness we need. But with careful vine management and picking control we can keep a degree of elegance and finesse in the styles we make.

In a marketing sense, the Barossa is probably unique amongst Australian winegrowing, with its history and heritage of the German settlers arriving in the 1830s providing the special flavour that is this tiny community.

� What contributes to the pricepoint of the high-end Charles Melton wines – the Nine Popes, the Shiraz, and the Cabernet Sauvignon?

- the quality of the fruit:
o Barossa grown,
o vines aged up to 130 years,
o hand pruned down to 1.5 tonnes/acre,
o hand harvested,
o bunch-thinned when necessary (in a naturally high-yielding year),
o growers paid top $$ to keep crops low/quality high.

- the winemaking:
o Charlie’s experience, expertise and reputation – built over 30 years;
o the wines are handcrafted. Hard labour goes into the picking, crushing, pumping-over, pressing, barrel work, and blending;
o only the best (mainly French - Saury) oak is used;
o the wines are in limited supply – only 250-300 tonnes/12-15,000 cases a year;
o the wines have gained national and international recognition; they are in high demand throughout the world;
o the wines have been judged among the best in their class by the most educated palates in the world – Robert Parker, Wine Spectator (USA), Decanter, Jancis Robinson, Robert Joseph (UK), James Halliday (Aus), Bob Campbell (NZ), Winpac (Asia).


� What sort of oak treatment do the wines receive?

All the dry reds - The Nine Popes, Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon – receive the same amount of time in oak, approximately 16 months.

The Nine Popes and Shiraz are matured in a combination of French oak (80%) and American oak (20%), approximately 25% of which is new each year.

The Cabernet Sauvignon is matured in 100% new French oak.

� What is Charles Melton’s view of screwcap closures?

Cork spoilage, either through cork taint (TCA) or random oxidation is undoubtedly a big problem. We hate to think of one of our customers opening a bottle of any of our wines, having cellared it carefully for five or more years, only to find that it’s corked!

Charlie and Nicki both attended the International Screwcap Conference in New Zealand in 2004, and we came back feeling very positive about the benefits of screwcap closures. We took part in tastings of back vintages of both white and red wines under screwcap vs cork.

We have also conducted our own screwcap vs cork trials here at Charles Melton for the past six vintages and, to date, we can see no difference in quality (except, of course, we know some of the wines under cork will have TCA).

Over the past few years, a lot of our customers have been asking us when we will be going to screwcap for the Reds – and a survey of our Mail Order customers recently showed the majority of people were keen to purchase the wines under screwcap.

To this end, the entire range of Charles Melton’s 2005 vintage Reds (except for a few export orders) – the Nine Popes, Shiraz, Cabernet, Voices of Angels, Grains of Paradise, and the Father in Law - have all been bottled under screwcap… as well as the Rose of Virginia of course!