Southern winery's loving touch

If you travel 20 minutes west of Christchurch on the West Coast Road (State Highway 73) you'll enter the leafy locale of West Melton, which is home to a plucky community of winegrowers, including Melton Estate.
Previously known as Sherwood Estate, the Melton Estate winery is the brainchild of Philip Caunter, a million-miles-an-hour man who can add "software entrepreneur" and "ardent fan of the West Melton RFC" to his busy business card.
He'd asked me to pop out to the vineyard one warm, sunny day to sample some "summer love". I thought about it. He did sound quite nice on the phone and my husband did happen to be away for a few days, so I said, "Sure, what's the harm".
Upon arrival, rather than asking me up to see his etchings Philip led me out into the small, but perfectly formed, vineyard where he started talking about Melton Estate's flagship wine, a sparkling riesling called, wait for it, Summer Love.
"I started the sparkling riesling as an experiment," Philip says. "I visited the Yarra Valley and sampled a pink moscato - something I'd never tried before - at a place called Innocent Bystander. It was spritzy, sweet, refreshing and I loved it. I came back and said to our winemaker: 'Let's make this.' He said, 'Well, clearly we can't grow moscato here,' and I agreed.
"But then he said, 'So we're going to make it with riesling and add 10 per cent pinot noir to pink it up.'
"We've mixed something that's never been done before and it's worked."
Initially, I thought sparkling riesling sounded cheesy and lightweight but on sipping it, the end result is anything but that.
"We've been making it for three years now, every batch seems to get better and better so we think we're on to a winner," Philip says.
Melton has doubled production each year and it still sells out.
Pinot noir is another variety that has Philip fizzing and looking at his pinot noir block, it's incredibly green and lush.
"We've had a lot of growth this year, which is amazing because this block doesn't get watered at all. And we've been very aggressive fruit-thinning and leaf-plucking, aiming for maximum ripeness.
"Today we're about 19brix (a measure of sugar ripeness) but by harvest we need to be up around 24."
Harvest chaos starts here this month.
"Canterbury has a really nice autumn," Philip says, handing me a taste of the newly bottled 2010 pinot.
"Canterbury maintains those essential warm days and cool nights right into May, which is just fantastic for growing grapes. It's quite even-tempered, but come July it's custard like the rest of the South Island, but the vines bounce back."
The vineyard is fully netted. "Birds are aggressive here in Canterbury because they've got very little to feed on, so they're going to turn up and decimate your crop if you're not careful."
Sauvignon blanc isn't a grape he's worrying about, however, "What's the point? We could grow great sauvignon, but when you see it in the supermarkets for less than 10 bucks a bottle, it ain't worth it.
"We make a Marlborough sauvignon that we serve for our events here, and that works for us."
Everything is very compact at Melton Estate, and every metre of land is utilised by the vineyard, a function centre about to undergo some sensational renovations. It is quite unlike much of West Melton's "lifestyle" surrounds, which appear proudly devoted to dogs, ponies and tennis courts.
Ninety per cent of the wines are sold onsite, and while other cellar doors revel in their rustic ramshackle charm, Melton Estate makes no bones about promoting itself as a slick, high-tech, corporate-friendly function centre.
"What we learned early on is that we had all these people turning up for weddings, functions and corporate events, and they only really wanted to drink Heineken and sauvignon blanc," Philip says.
"We realised that rather than overtly or aggressively promoting our wine, we were happier encouraging wine hospitality. People come here for lunch or for an event, and the fact that our wines are nice is an extra bonus."
It's all over after 400 years trading
I read with sadness the story of the recession forcing Britain's oldest off-licence to shut down after almost 400 years. Baker's Wine Merchants in Bishop's Waltham, near Southampton, had been selling liquor since 1617 but had to shut because the owners could no longer afford the rent.
There was also the threat of losing business to a new Sainsbury's supermarket planned for the little town.
Baker's had been owned by just two families for 244 years.
Managing director Colin Baker says there were too few customers in the village and the overheads were too high. Manager Oliver Bartley says the main problem has been the downturn: "Because people are earning less money they want to spend less on wine.
"They go to the supermarket and spend just £3 ($6.25) on a bottle of wine and we can't compete with those prices.
"The landlord wouldn't drop the rent so we had no hope of surviving."