OX HARDY

“Andrew is now into his fourth decade (he won’t thank me for this!) of making elite wine and yet I think that he is finally managing to craft near-perfect wines with every label he releases. Exacting standards and epic raw materials, coupled with a burning desire to encourage his vineyards to express themselves fully in the glass, make these wines which speak from the heart as well as from the elemental soils in his family vineyards... No self-respecting wine collector can declare their cellar complete without a few cases of these wines in their racks.” Matthew Jukes

Ox Hardy's Chardonnay comes from the cooler Adelaide Hills and offers crisp citrus and honeydew melon notes atop delicate mango skin, peach and passion fruit. The focus here is on bright, vivid fruit thanks to vinification in stainless steel. Winemaker Ox also uses a very small proportion of second fill barriques which suffuses all these crystalline flavours with a delightfully supple texture without imparting any obvious oak influence. White blossom, fresh fennel and tingling minerals add delightful complexity to the impressively concentrated fruit, leading to a long, mouth-watering finish.

Sourced from millennium plantings on the Hardy family Vineyard, this wine is a contemporary style of McLaren Vale or - more specifically - Blewitt Springs Shiraz. Being more elevated and cooler than the Vale floor gives the wines from the Upper Tintara Vineyard high levels of natural acidity, great freshness, and bright lively colour. The use of second fill French oak barriques for maturation further enhances the primary fruit flavours and allows the characteristics of the vineyard and location to shine through. Made with a minimal intervention winemaking philosophy, this wine is not only a classic example of modern McLaren Vale Shiraz but also a great reflection of the sub-region where it’s grown.

The estate is also home to the original Upper Tintara Winery, which fell into disuse in 1923 following Thomas Hardy’s passing in 1912. In 2018, wine was again made in the original slate open fermenters for the first time in 95 years in the form of this Slate Shiraz. The original fermenters, made from immense slabs of locally quarried slate, were cleaned and resealed with wax in preparation for vintage. 2.3 tonnes of Shiraz from the Moreton Bay block of the family’s vineyard was shovelled into the open fermenters by hand, with the open ferment hand plunged three times a day for 9 days before the wine was pumped out and the skins dug out with bucket and shovel. Following basket pressing, the small batch of wine was matured for 18 months in the finest French oak barriques before bottling and release.

Planted by Andrew’s great-great grandfather Thomas Hardy in 1891, the last remaining 2.54 hectare block of ancestor vines are some of Australia’s oldest and most valuable and still produce exceptionally high-quality fruit. Referred to as Bob’s selection after Andrew’s father, cuttings from these grandfather vines have been borrowed by neighbours over time, to plant some of the most celebrated vineyards in the district. Unlike other vines of similar longevity, they still appear youthful and barely half their age to the naked eye. They also produce yields of a much younger and healthier vine. As a result of the limited amount of 1891 ancestor vines, this extraordinary wine is made in extremely small quantities.