Use meld as git diff tool without a wrapper script

Question

I have installed meld on my system; $ meld works from the command line. I do

$ git config --global diff.tool meld

and then

$ cd path/to/my/repo
$ git config --list
diff.tool=meld
core.repositoryformatversion=0
core.filemode=true
<blah blah blah>

However, git difftool does not invoke meld. If I do git difftool I get the diff dumped into the console. This is unexpected given the git documentation:

-t --tool= Use the diff tool specified by <tool>. Valid values include emerge, kompare, meld, and vimdiff. Run git difftool --tool-help for the list of valid <tool> settings.

If a diff tool is not specified, git difftool will use the configuration variable diff.tool. If the configuration variable diff.tool is not set, git difftool will pick a suitable default.

I've seen some discussion of using a python or bash script to invoke meld but given that the git documentation explicitly mentions meld as one of the possible tools I'd think this should work without a wrapper.

Is there a way to use meld as the git diff tool without using an external wrapper?