Apple juice is apple juice
But each variety spins a unique story in your mind
Richard Scarry, Johnny Appleseed, William Tell
Or your favourite teacher
Twist the lid and come along for an adventure…
No foreign owners or apples.
We’re not pulling the wool like some of the other drinks in the fridge.
When you buy Mela you are directly supporting a genuine NZ small business where the owners are the operators so your dollars stay here in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Only Aotearoa NZ-grown apples go into our juice.
Questions we ask ourselves.
How can we treat our people well?
We pay all our employees a living wage.
How “OG” is our product?
All our ingredients are GE-free, including the vitamin C we add.
How can we best treat waste?
All our by-product (fruit pulp) is taken by local farmers and added to their farm feed program.
How can we cut carbon kilometres?
We use only NZ apples and pears, and source local Wairarapa apples whenever possible (the closest apples make the best juice).
How do we make glass good?
Our 330ml glass bottles are made in NZ and recyclable in NZ.
How do we make plastic good?
Our 2L bottles are BPA-free, made in NZ from ‘HDPE’ — yes, that’s petroleum, but happily it’s #1 plastic which is recyclable in NZ.
What can we ask of our providers?
We want to encourage a world where everyone is upping their game.
So we ask our providers the same questions we ask ourselves. This includes our orchards, our packaging providers, our distribution agents and our designer.
An apple tree grown from seed will produce different apples to the parent tree. To keep growing the same variety of apple, “budwood” from the desired tree is grafted onto a different apple tree’s “rootstock”. Great varieties mainly emerge by careful cultivation, but occasionally an awesome “sport” (a wild tree like the Braeburn) will emerge by chance.
Aotearoa New Zealand is a leader in developing and growing world-famous apple varieties. We lay claim to Gala, Braeburn, Jazz, Rose, Envy and more. Te Hūpēnui Greytown (where we live) is an epicentre of this…
A century ago James Hutton Kidd was an avid apple breeder with his 20-acre orchard just up the road from Mela. Using hand-pollination he developed Kidd's Orange Red and sold the propagation rights to Taranaki nursery Duncan & Davies for a hefty £2000. Encouraged by this he kept at it, crossing Kidd's Orange Red with Golden Delicious and in 1934 Gala was among the results. Gala remains huge worldwide, and more than 20 sports of Gala have received plant patents including the pinker-skinned Royal Gala.
Aotearoa New Zealand’s modern varieties are almost inevitably hybrids of Kidd’s work. An ENZA™ collaboration produced the Jazz in 1985 — a Royal Gala/Braeburn hybrid, and so it keeps on.
It feels right that we’re doing what we’re doing at Mela, with our own hybrid twist...
