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Charles Melton Sparkling Red 2005 |
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To cut a long story short …A boy from Sydney named Graeme Melton, arrived in the Barossa Valley in 1973. Graeme and a mate needed jobs to fix their broken-down EH Holden ute to continue their road trip across Australia. There were two jobs going – one as a cellarhand at a local winery called Krondorf, and another pruning at a vineyard down the road. They flipped a coin – Graeme got the cellarhand job.
At Krondorf he met Barossa winemaking legend Peter Lehmann (chief winemaker for the Dalgety group, Stonyfeld and Saltram), and moved with Peter when he set up his new winery 6 years later. Lehmann refused to call his protégé “Graeme”, hence “Charlie” was born - and has stuck!
Just to speed this up a bit… During the next 10 years, ‘Charlie’ honed his winemaking skills under Lehmann – and met his wife-to-be, Virginia. Fast enough? In that time, he also travelled to France, and developed the beginnings of what would become a life-long passion for the wines of the Rhone Valley – in particular the Southern Rhone where Grenache, Shiraz and Mourvedre are blended with up to 11 other varieties, as in the Chateauneuf du Pape appellation.
In 1984, Charlie purchased his first grapes to be made under the new “Charles Melton” label – and produced a Sparkling Red from old vines, dry-grown in the Barossa. He soon splashed out again – this time purchasing 13 acres of Grenache and Shiraz. At that time, he also built the cellar door (“the barn”) and winery which still stands today in Krondorf Road, just outside Tanunda, in the valley of Barossa, in the state of South Australia
I simply have to defer to my learned friends here and agree with their review that this wine has a beautiful, intense nose: what a communication of the variety (shiraz). There is a prickle of pepper amongst fine, some sweet liquorice spices, drawn over a canvas of textured, ripe, macerated small dark berries.
The complexity is awesome and the wine's poise superb. The mouth rushes with an amalgam of velvety richness, lashings of layered flavour carried on the fizz, a suggestion of earthiness here, and smudge of ripe tannin there. Seductive, structured, long Boudoir wine.
AUSTRALIAN SOMMELIER magazine, Summer 2005
Charles Melton NV Sparkling Red - 2005 disgorgement
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$$$: |
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WBW Rating: |
93/100 |
Don't Pay: |
$57.00 |
Closure: |
Cork & Twist |
Region: |
Barossa Valley SA |
Winemaker: |
Graeme Melton |
Drink Now Until: |
Enjoy Now - 2009 |
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