Merbein Vineyard

Merbein Vineyard

Innovation and Tradition Converge in the Murray Darling

The Chalmers Merbein base, on Njeri Njeri Country, with the original 1913 homestead sheltered under towering Norfolk pines, is home to the nursery, winery and the precious resource of mother vine material that is the heart of the operation.

The old settlement site was acquired in 2010, with immediate planting in the red sand and limestone soils under the Murray Darling’s arching canopy of blue sky. The Merbein vineyard is home to grapes for both Chalmers wines and to supply other makers. It is also where varieties are put through their paces to test which viticultural practices – from rootstocks, density, trellising, water use etc. through to ideal crop loads and picking dates – are ideal.

These trials are intimately linked to the work in the onsite winery, where the results are shown in finished form. It’s where style directions are developed for the Chalmers ranges, and it’s also a tool to properly assess where these varieties are best planted. That’s vital information for nursery clients, and it determines where and how future blocks are planted and managed, right down to small nuances of geological, aspect and exposure perspectives.

The Merbein vineyard is home to the mother block of the Chalmers Nursery Collection consisting of around 50 grape varieties grown for wine production, from trial rows and micro-parcels to more commercially sized blocks. All the varieties have been selected for their suitability to the conditions, with lower water needs, heat tolerance and, most importantly, the potential to make exceptional wine that speaks of place.

The Merbein Vineyard is also home to bush vine blocks of Inzolia and Negroamaro planted to an old orange orchard on a distinctive sandy rise. These blocks are planted to 1,600 vines per hectare with the un-trellised vine structure that is traditional in parts of southern Italy, where the grapes hail from, but innovative for the Murray Darling. Drought-tolerant rootstocks seek underground water, and only minimal irrigation is supplied overhead if required to mimic rainfall, though the end goal is to exclude irrigation entirely.