Greg Melick

Greg (pictured left), owner of Pressing Matters, wasn’t sure which was worse: his mother finding 2 cases of wine in the bottom of his wardrobe or finding out that to purchase the wine he’d gambled at a very tender age and won on the daily double at Werribee ….. and so began Greg’s love affair with wine.

Greg has been a passionate consumer of wine for over 50 years and has visited many vineyards throughout the world. He wears many other hats: Senior Counsel; Major General in the Australian Defence Force in a career spanning 50 years; a national and international wine judge; a Master Judge of Wine and one of the few Australians to hold a passport from the Primum Familae Vinum. With a remarkable palate memory (now, he says, fading with Winezheimers) Greg has been know to correctly name, in a blind tasting, a wine by having read about it alone.

As busy as Greg is in his first careers, he is committed and passionate about producing quality Tasmanian Riesling and Pinot Noir and in his words ‘runs interference’ in key aspects of the vineyard. His two favourite wine growing areas are Mosel and Burgundy. Hence, the vineyard has been planted with the two ‘Noble’ varieties Riesling and Pinot Noir.

Greg is married to his second love Michelle (his first love, he famously once said in her hearing, was ‘wine’) and has 3 adult children. Amazingly he has time for a wife and family but, sadly, the children don’t drink wine so he’s still working on the succession plan.

Michelle Melick 

Wife of the above-mentioned workaholic, Michelle keeps the home fires burning looking after administration, sales, marketing, tastings and some selective vineyard tasks. She avoids pruning– mainly because she has a black thumb, but really, who wants to be outside in 5 degrees pruning all day. Michelle is quite happy to mow the rows on her John Deere 52” ride-on, lift wires, paint the sheds, attend wine fairs and occasionally make morning teas for the real workers at the vineyard…..

  

Matt Connaughton

Good wine is always made better by good people sharing good stories. (MC)

My journey to Pressing Matters started five years before with the spectacular meeting of myself and the fiery demi-god that is now my love. From there we embarked on a perilous quest across the country to discover and consume all the joys this place had to offer. It was fraught with villainous traps and dastardly schemes designed to decouple me from her and they were all foiled by our cunning, wit and sometimes by me.
Finally we found a place that embodied all we had seen and called it home.

The next day I began work at the vineyard called Pressing Matters and after 5 years of great adventure I became the manager. This place is amazing and whenever you can drop by I would be glad to share my stories of this place, the grapes we grow and the wine we make – all while tasting the wines that themselves tell a story of the year that they were made.

Maybe I got that first sentence wrong. Maybe it should have said: Good stories are always made better by good people sharing good wine!