Wine, words and whimsy: meet the wine entrepreneur-turned-writer keeping things real

Published in On The Record, 7 Jun 2024

Sometimes, it takes creativity to keep things real.

That sounds a little counterintuitive but for wine entrepreneur-turned-writer Melissa Raymond, it not only works: it’s been necessary.

I sit at her kitchen bench, watching as she makes me a cup of tea — earl grey mixed with English breakfast, because it “just tastes better”.

Dressed for vineyard work in her cosy Kathmandu jacket, jeans and sneakers, she lifts a heavy blue French kettle off the stovetop and pours steaming water into two mugs.

As the tea steeps, my eyes wander around the kitchen, from the crisp, white cabinetry to the exposed stonework of the next room.

“Your house is beautiful,” I tell her.

“Thank you,” Melissa says, beaming as she fetches a jar of biscuits.

She’s been living in the 1850s house with her husband Peter and two daughters since 2008, when she fell in love with the Eden Valley property’s viticultural potential.

“It took years of work to renovate. [The kitchen] is all new, but that’s the original stone. I wanted to preserve the heritage of the house, keep it real,” she says.

After a few minutes, Melissa hands me my mug.

As I settle back in my kitchen stool, burning my tongue on her uniquely delicious tea creation, she sprays away gathering flies with bug spray.

“This is life in the country,” she laughs. The sweetness of the earl grey perfectly balances the sharpness of the English breakfast.

Like her house, it’s an unconventional combination, but it works.

Once our mugs are empty, Melissa leads me out to the Garden & Field Wines vineyards.

Dust kicks up beneath our feet as we walk among the rows, yet the vines themselves are lush and leafy.

There’s a spring in Melissa’s step as she instinctively picks up debris and re-arranges askew vines.

When she and Peter first arrived here, they had their work cut out for them.

They discovered that the Schillings, a German family, had bought the bare property in 1854, working on their vineyards for over 100 years.

The next owner carelessly ripped the vines down, but Peter recognised the soil’s enduring viticultural potential and the couple set to work restoring the vineyards by hand.

“Modern winemakers tend to buy seedlings, irrigate the ground and hire workers,” Melissa tells me, painstakingly untangling two vines.

“We didn’t want to do that. That’s not real. We wanted to work from the land, like the Schillings did.”

Local winemakers laughed at her plans.

“They said we couldn’t do it alone with our methods,” she tells me.

Despite this, the couple persevered, planting in the moonlight — the only spare time they had.

“That’s why this section is called the Moonlight section,” she says.

“It would be quite normal that we would be out planting at midnight or 1am after the girls went to bed.”

Rather than buying seedlings, the couple sourced a mixture of vintage and modern vine cuttings, which they trimmed, calloused and established in nurseries onsite.

Once established, the vines were planted in the vineyards, where they relied on natural water and spacing to keep them alive.

“By planting the vines two metres apart, the root systems aren’t competing against each other, so they can sustain themselves.”

It was slow-going, but it was honest work. In 2014, after years of painstakingly tending to their vines, Melissa and Peter’s creative methods paid off.

As Peter began producing shiraz under their new label, Garden & Field Wines, Melissa began running a 15-label cellar door called Taste Eden Valley Regional Wine Room.

“I put our wine as a label in Taste Eden Valley, and that’s how it all started,” Melissa says, leading me towards a corrugated iron shed at the vineyard’s edge.

Unlike the shiny metal of its pointed roof, the shed’s walls are tinged brown.

“This was an old wheat store,” Melissa says as we step inside and settle ourselves at a low table.

Pointing up to the ceiling, she tells me that the brown-tinged walls were the shed’s old roof.

“We didn’t want to throw the old roof out, because it’s part of the history … it keeps that story going.” 

She hands me a brochure for Taste Eden Valley, which, along with most of the cellar door’s content, she wrote herself.

“This looks great,” I say, flipping through the list of labels.

“I thought I’d give you a copy because it isn’t around anymore,” she says.

I look up from the brochure. “What happened?” I ask.

Melissa ran Taste Eden Valley for seven years until the COVID-19 pandemic forced her to shut up shop.

“International tourism stopped, and without tourists, you won’t survive,” she says bluntly.

It was a tough decision to walk away from years of hard work, let alone the hundreds of thousands of dollars she’d invested in the business.

Melissa and Peter were determined to keep Garden & Field Wines going solo but needed a place to sell their product.

“If you’ve only got a website, no one’s going to buy your wine. That’s just reality,” she says.

They had the bright idea to adapt their shed into a cellar door; with its rustic charm and nearby vineyard, they thought it would be an authentic way for guests to enjoy and buy their wine.

Unfortunately, Melissa’s creativity soon met a regulatory roadblock.

“We’d had plans drawn up before,” she tells me, sighing. “During COVID, they updated planning policies.

“They decided our toilets were too far away and we had to get the plans redone.”

In South Australia, I find out, planning applications are submitted to PlanSA, who operate under the Planning, Development and Infrastructure Act 2016 (updated in September 2021).

While it’s hard to find specific requirements regarding toilet proximity, rural development applications like Melissa’s are subject to final say from the local council and are assessed individually.

“So far, we’ve spent over $20,000 on plans,” Melissa says.

“It would cost at least another $75,000 to build new toilets. It’s going to cost too much for us to pursue, I think.”

While the future of Garden & Field Wines is uncertain, Melissa has refused to let her creativity fizzle out.

“When COVID hit and we were waiting for the building plans, it was actually a good thing in a way,” she says.

“I’d always wanted to go back to uni and do writing.”

Pointing to the Tasting Eden Valley brochure, she tells me she’d always enjoyed writing; she just hadn’t realised she was doing it.

“I was writing content and media releases all this time without realising they were media releases,” she laughs.

Melissa studied a Bachelor of Arts (Creative Writing and Literature) at The University of South Australia before moving into a Master of Communication this year.

As we talk, movement outside the screen door catches my eye — it’s a little, black-feathered chicken, scratching at the dirt, shuffling along awkwardly but determinedly. I laugh.

“Sorry, it’s just there’s a chicken outside,” I say, returning my gaze to Melissa.

“Yeah, animals often come right up to the door,” she smiles.

“I get inspired, writing here. I wrote a story in Verse Magazine recently about a crow coming to the door while I was working.”

On top of her study and vineyard responsibilities, Melissa is this year’s editor of Verse, UniSA’s student magazine.

“I’m absolutely loving it,” she tells me. “And it’ll hopefully open up some more writing opportunities for me.”

The breadth of writing career pathways is daunting to Melissa.

She’s not sure where she wants to go yet, but, sitting across from her in this little tin office of her imagining, I have no doubt her enduring philosophy will guide her down whichever path she chooses.

Despite every obstacle, every doubtful onlooker and every dead end, she’s found crafty ways to persevere without compromising her authenticity.

“This whole thing, for me, is about being connected to real things,” she says.

“Growing products while living in the country, to me, is real. Writing stories about local products and producers is real. It’s all about truth, I guess.”