Hi there,

Welcome to the October edition of The Palate.

This month our chief winemaker, Paul Lapsley, introduces us to vibrant and fruity dry white wines and talks about two of Australia's most popular varietals, Sauvignon Blanc and Riesling. Bill Hardy fills us in on his travels worldwide as our Hardys Ambassador and we’ll keep you up to date with our latest award wins and reviews.

We also have tips on great places to eat, kick back, relax and of course, enjoy your favourite Hardys drop, with plenty of exclusive offers along the way.

We also want to hear from you – what you’re drinking, what you’re thinking and where you are in Australia or across the globe. We’re all looking forward to chatting with you about one of life’s greatest pleasures… a glass of Hardys wine.

Regards,
The Team at Hardys

In this issue:

Wine Styles

From the winery

Hardys at large

You said it!

And much more!

Vibrant and fruity dry white wines

Ah, Spring, you can smell it in the air (not to mention pollen and it’s partner hayfever). There’s nothing like Spring to bring a vibrant, fresh verve and joie de vivre moments. This must mean it’s time for some whites - shake off the teeth-staining reds and immerse yourself in aromatic, estery, tropical fruit, length and precision ... you get the picture.

And what new releases do we have to complement this wonderful season? Well, we have a treat for you with the 2010 HRB Riesling, a juicy, punchy blend from the Clare Valley and Tasmania, highlighting once again what a delicious style Riesling can be created from these two wonderful areas. Think mineral acidity, cool, textural, lime and citrus blossom, spice ... know what I mean?

And so to the Adelaide Hills: green, bumps and lumps, roller coaster, shady, sunny, what a journey of terroir, and surely the best place in Oz to grow Savvy? Certainly in South Australia, where our Oomoo Sauvignon Blanc hails from with 100% Adelaide Hills fruit. Fragrant with passionfruit, gooseberry fruit and citrus, don’t eat fresh fruit each day, just have a glass of this! And of course our Nottage Hill Sauvignon Blanc. A blend of regions (Riverland and Limestone Coast) resulting in a wine that’s warm, soft (almost cuddly), rounded but with tropical fruit flavours, deft acid and zippy. Undoubtedly a kaleidoscope of flavours ... get me a glass!

Wine Region Focus - The Adelaide Hills

Forming a backdrop to the city of Adelaide, the Hills region may be easy to get to but difficult to summarise. Differing soil types, altitudes and valley positions create distinct microclimates that have a profound impact on the nuances of each vineyard.

One thing is certain though - the Adelaide Hills produce excellent cool-climate fruit from Sauvignon Blanc to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. Even Shiraz thrives on the warmer, more exposed slopes.

Fruit for Oomoo and HRB feature prominently here, especially Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Shiraz and Sangiovese. In fact, Hardys Oomoo Sauvignon Blanc was awarded the trophy for Best Sauvignon Blanc in the Adelaide Hills at the 2008 Adelaide Hills Wine Show.

exclusive offer

Special offer

Purchase 6 bottles of your favourite vibrant and fruity dry white wines at a special member price:

Nottage Hill Sauvignon Blanc 2010 $42.50 per 6 bottles
Oomoo Sauvignon Blanc 2009 $90 per 6 bottles
HRB Riesling 2010 $165 per 6 bottles

Click here to order

Celery shot

From the Kitchen

Roll on Summer! Summer means fresh fruity whites and fresh vibrant salads at last!

Both Nottage Hill Sauvignon Blanc and Oomoo Sauvignon Blanc are ideal salad wines as they are light with moderate acidity and dry. The Sauvignon Blanc grape has the added advantage of being slightly green and vegetative in flavour – matching many summer salad ingredients.

The following celery salad with anchovy mayonnaise is ideal. It can be served with finely sliced ham, smoked salmon or rare beef and fresh home-made bread – a fabulously simple summer meal.

Not only are these wine suited for the reasons above, but the creamy mayonnaise also matches the broader softer style of both Sauvignons and the crunchy celery matches the freshness and vibrance of the new vintage.

And for the HRB Riesling? – Lightly battered South Australian whiting served with a liberal squeeze of lemon and chips takes a lot of beating.

Crunchy Celery Salad with Anchovy Dressing

Serves 6

Mix the following ingredients in a large salad bowl:
Half a large head of celery very finely sliced including the leaves
Half a large red onion very finely diced
Small bunch parsley finely chopped

Stir through ½ to one cup of anchovy mayonnaise and serve

(NB the secret to success with this salad is making sure the ingredients are finely sliced)

Mayonnaise

3 egg yolks
3 cups of light salad oil
Large tablespoon of Dijon mustard
6 rinsed and finely chopped anchovies

Method:

Process yolks and drizzle in oil while processor is on until very thick
Add anchovies, serve and enjoy with a glass of Nottage Hill Sauvignon Blanc!

Spring has certainly arrived here in McLaren Vale following the commencement of daylight savings. The additional sunshine and warmth has awoken the previously dormant vineyard rows which now display early season growth.

We invite you to visit us at Cellar Door to taste a selection of our award winning wines. It is such a wonderful time to visit Hardys Tintara as the garden is in full bloom. The bust of Pioneer and Founder Thomas Hardy, sits proudly near the Ingrid Bergman Rose bed which can be found behind Cellar Door.

Hope to see you soon!

Cellar Door Hardys Tintara


	From The Tasting Bench Hardys Tintara Cellar Door hosted some very important visitors last month, namely the US Ambassador to Australia, Mr Jeffrey L Bleich, and his wife, Rebecca. The couple travelled from Canberra especially to visit McLaren Vale and enjoy its premier food and wine offerings. Their visit commenced with a historical tour hosted by Hardys Brand Ambassador Bill Hardy and concluded with a structured tasting at our cellar door. The couple was treated to the 2008 Eileen Hardy Chardonnay, 2008 Eileen Hardy Pinot Noir and 2006 Thomas Hardy Cabernet Sauvignon. Early reports indicate the Ambassador has returned a very happy man to Canberra, with a bottle of the Eileen Hardy Chardonnay and Thomas Hardy Cabernet Sauvignon.
	Cellar Door Offer Eileen Hardy Pinot Noir 2008 $80 per bottle. Offer includes complimentary domestic freight. Eileen Hardy Pinot Noir 2008 recently won GOLD Best in Class at the International Wine and Spirit Competition. The first Pinot Noir to be released under the Eileen Hardy label, the 2008 vintage topped the Australian Pinot Noir (2009-2008) tasting category. Judges described the wine as "Utterly fantastic"and "Incredible wine truffle extravaganza! Rich, complex and wonderful. Very well made Pinot that shows both terroir and varietal character". Click here to order - be quick!

Out and about with Bill Hardy

I’m currently up in Japan on the Bullet Train travelling from Tokyo to Osaka. I’ve just spent 3 amazing days in the Tokyo market with our Constellation Wines Japan team who look after the distribution of Hardys Wines in Japan. They’re doing a fabulous job and have made Hardys the number one selling Australian wine brand in the Japanese market.

It’s always fascinating getting involved with food and wine matching when in a country with such different cuisine. In fact Japan does not have just one cuisine but a myriad of diverse ways of preparing food – just think: sashimi, sushi, shabu shabu, tempura, yakitori, teppanyaki, etc., etc! But the interesting part of this visit is that our local Marketing Manager, Natsuko Kumazawa, has chosen to pair our wines with different world cuisines prepared by Japanese chefs. In the 3 days I spent in Tokyo, we paired our Nottage Hill, Chronicles, Oomoo, HRB and Eileen/Thomas Hardy wines with top-end Korean BBQ, Indian, Italian, Chinese, and Italian-Japanese fusion meals. Some of the combinations were simply superb – it’s not very Japanese, but having a plate of pan-fried foie gras with a glass each of the 2006 Eileen Hardy Chardonnay and the International Shiraz Challenge-winning 2006 HRB Shiraz and trying to decide which wine is the better match is not the least bit unpleasant. Eileen triumphed on the night!

To bring me back to reality, these wonderful dining experiences with senior trade and press guests were interspersed with some full-on seminar-tastings for the selling staff of some of our top wholesale distributors.

The importance of the Asian markets to the Australian wine industry at present cannot be over-emphasised as the North American and European markets tread water while trying to put the effects of the global financial crisis behind them. Hardys Wines was one of the first Australian wine companies to actively export to Asia and we still lead the way in many Asian markets. In fact my Japan visit was preceded, a couple of weeks earlier, by visits to Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore, and I will spend 3 days working in the Philippines on the way home from Japan.

Whilst wine drinking is yet to entrench itself in most Asian cultures, there is no doubt that with increasing wealth and the opening up of these countries through the communication and travel revolution, there is far greater interest in wine – and not just the top-end!

It certainly continues to give me a thrill to find our Hardys wines in the far-flung corners of some of these very exotic markets and I often think that my great great grandfather would so proud that his vision of his wines being ‘prized in all the markets of the world’ is becoming a reality.

Thomas Trohpy

Awards and Accolades

Eileen Hardy Pinot Noir wins Best in Class

Hardys chief winemaker, Paul Lapsley and the Hardys team recently had an impressive win at the International Wine and Spirit Competition (IWSC). The 2008 Eileen Hardy Pinot Noir, the first Pinot Noir to be released under the Eileen Hardy label, won Gold Best in Class in the Australian Pinot Noir (2009-2008) tasting category. It is the wine’s one and only showing at a wine competition, due to its limited production and the volume restrictions in place on Australian wine shows. With entries from more than 80 countries, Paul is absolutely delighted with the result at what he describes as “the United Nations of wine shows”.

Impressive in Adelaide

Hardys was impressive at the 2010 Royal Adelaide Wine Show last month, walking away with 26 medals, including two gold. The yet-to-be-released 2008 HRB Shiraz was one of the gold medal winners. It is expected to be released into the market in the next 12 to 18 months. Our NV Rare Muscat also won gold, after recently being awarded gold medals at the 2010 Perth Royal Wine Show and 2010 Riverland Wine Show. Look out for it when it is released early next year.

More wins for Oomoo Sparkling Shiraz

The accolades keep rolling in for the 2004 Hardys Oomoo Sparkling Shiraz. It was named Wine Judges and Consumer Judges First Place in Class 8 (Sparkling Reds) at the 2010 South Australian Wine of the Year Awards last month. It then went on to be named in the Top 5 SA Wines in the Adelaide Advertiser's Best of Adelaide 2010 feature.

Thomas Hardy tops WA Hyatt-Regency Cabernet tasting

It took 1700 Riedel glasses, 200 bottles of Western Australia’s finest Cabernet Sauvignons, a slew of WA’s best winemakers and four international wine buyers, to judge the 2004 Thomas Hardy, as the best wine in the inaugural Hyatt-Regency Perth WA Cabernet taste-off. The 2004 Thomas Hardy Cabernet Sauvignon, (on 17.5 points), which uses grapes from Margaret River, faced down competing wines from such well known makers as Cullen, Moss Wood, Plantagenet and Vasse Felix.

Good Food and Wine Show

We've just come back from the Good Food & Wine Show in Adelaide where we welcomed many of you at the Hardys stand.

Hardys will be at the last GFWS for the year in Brisbane Friday November 5th – Sunday November 7th 2010 at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre, so please come and say hello.

Come and discover thousands of tastes, flavours, products and techniques from hundreds of exhibitors. We will be bringing some of our best loved wines, and some you may not have tried before including our new release, Nottage Hill Sparkling Pinot Noir Chardonnay and some of our new 2010 vintage releases.

For more information, tickets and times, log onto www.goodfoodshow.com.au

Desert Country

The Art Gallery of South Australia presents Desert Country

Hardys is the proud supporter of the Art Gallery of South Australia through its sponsorship of Contemporary Collectors.

Drawn entirely from the extensive holdings of Aboriginal art from the Art Gallery of South Australia’s pioneering collection, Desert Country is the first exhibition to chart the forty year evolution of the internationally acclaimed Australian desert painting movement, and to demonstrate the unstoppable reaches of this remarkable art movement.

Beginning with the exquisite watercolours of Albert Namatjira and his contemporaries, followed with rare examples of the first experimental paintings by its ground-breaking masters in 1971, Desert Country highlights the cultural fluidity between the principal Aboriginal art producing regions of the desert in the Northern Territory, South Australia and Western Australia. It culminates with powerful paintings from Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands of far northwest South Australia by some of Australia’s most outstanding contemporary artists such as Maringka Baker, Nura Rupert, Kunmanara Jimmy Baker and Tjungkara Ken.

Showing at the Art Gallery of South Australia until 26th January 2011, we have 10 pairs of tickets (worth $10 each) available to give away to our Hardys subscribers.

Simply mail theteam@hardys.com.au with your name, address and contact number to go into the free prize draw to win. In the subject heading, ensure you put Desert Country. Entries close 5pm (AEST) 19th November and winners will be contacted Monday 22ndAugust by email.*

If you miss out or require additional tickets the following is the ticketing details:

Adult $10, Concession $8, Member $6, Students and Child U16 Free
Season ticket: $10, available to Members only.
Book tickets online

*Competition only open to residents of South Australia. Draw will be held on Monday 22nd November 2010 at 10am at CWAU, Reynell Road, Reynella, SA 5161

NSW - Chophouse

Designed as a tribute to the old New York steakhouse, Chophouse references a bygone era. Inspired by the industrial and perhaps even a subtle nod to the rawness of the abattoir, the building’s original substructure has been unearthed. Elements have been stripped back to their raw, primitive nature while maintaining a certain edge and sex appeal.

25 Bligh St, Sydney 2000, 1300 246 748

SA - The Tower Hotel

The Tower Hotel is located in Magill, South Australia, just 15 minutes from the city at the foot of the stunning Adelaide Hills. After wandering up the palm garden boardwalk, take in the relaxed and welcoming environment as you browse their mouth-watering food and wine menu. A family-friendly venue that strives to cater for guests of all ages, ensuring your first visit will not be your last.

621 Magill Road, Magill 5072. 08 8331 3098

VIC - Village Belle Hotel

The Village Belle Hotel is a St Kilda icon. So deeply embedded in the local consciousness, the area surrounding this hotel became known as the Village Belle Precinct and was even officially recognised as such by the local council. With something to offer everyone, from the best valued meals in town, to great live music in the Doulton Bar, functions are also a specialty with a classy, 1920’s style room featuring leather club chairs, exquisite antique furniture, open fireplace and a balcony that overlooks Acland Street.
202 Barkly Street, St Kilda 3182. 03 9534 2000

WA - John Rifici & Sons

John Rifici & Sons Liquor Merchants began in October 1999. The desire to create a casual place for people to drop in for a light meal, a beer, pizza or just a coffee still holds true. The difference that Rifo's prides itself on is that people feel comfortable coming straight from the beach or for a business meeting - all are welcome at this fully licensed cafe with an extensive a la carte menu serving breakfast, lunch and dinner, 7 days a week, 364 days a year!
189 Guildford Road, Maylands 08 9271 1811

QLD - Amici's

Amici's Italian Restaurant has been a popular destination of South Bank since 1999. Situated in the middle of the parklands, Amici's offers a high standard of food and service that keeps bringing people back. The menu caters for all tastes including the little bambini's. Extensive pasta combinations, numerous Italian style Pizza's and a selection of Chicken, Steak and Seafood dishes.

Southbank Parklands, Brisbane 07 3844 8806

TAS - Oyster Bay Guest House

The Oyster Bay Guest House in located in the main street of the historical town of Swansea. With a front balcony with the best views in the town, the licensed cafe & restaurant is located right in the hub of the town, a short drive fro the most gorgeous beaches on the coast.

10 Franklin Street, Swansea, 7190

Have your Say

Here at Hardys we like to find out what you think and what is important to you - it keeps us on our toes and inspires us!!

Each month we’ll ask you to vote on a particular topic and we will post the results the following month. Last month we asked you “What is the most important factor for you when choosing wine?”

Over 50% of you told us that the most important factor when choosing wine was personal recommendations.

Seeking personal recommendations is an excellent way to find those hidden gems from friends and family. With thousands of wines in the market, it can be overwhelming, therefore it is often not a bad idea to go by word of mouth, instore staff recommendations and reviews from trusted publications.

This month we'd love to know what is your preferred region for Sauvignon Blanc. Click here to cast your vote

In this issue: Wine Styles From the winery Hardys at large You said it! And much more!

In this issue: Wine Styles From the winery Hardys at large You said it! And much more!

In this issue:

Vibrant and fruity dry white wines

Wine Region Focus - The Adelaide Hills

Special offer

From the Kitchen

Out and about with Bill Hardy

The Art Gallery of South Australia presents Desert Country

Have your Say

In this issue:

Wine Styles

From the winery

Hardys at large

You said it!

And much more!

In this issue:

Wine Styles

From the winery

Hardys at large

You said it!

And much more!