Charlotte Hardy makes wines her way, and that’s just fine
The best wines not only reflect the place they were grown but the person who made them. Charlotte Hardy balances her scientific skills with pure artistry.
Charlotte Hardy spent a good chunk of her career driving around the Adelaide Hills in fear of being arrested. Starting out as a vet nurse in her native New Zealand, she’d fallen in love with wine, realising it saturated the points in her head and heart where rational thought and artistic dreaming intersect.
She crossed the ditch and was working as a winemaker at The Lane in the Adelaide Hills when the technocrat in her saw an opportunity. She bought a white van and kitted it out with all manner of shiny, bubbly lab gear, so that she could offer mobile technical analysis to a new wave of winemakers plying their trade in small sheds and old cold stores around the Hills.
She operated her new business in perpetual fear of being pulled over by the police and looking more like Breaking Bad’s Walter White than wine scientist. She set up home in an old cottage in the Basket Range and fell for a bloke called Ben who loved vineyards the way she did too. Soon thoughts turned to tackling the twin challenges of starting a family and a wine brand of her own. While the former could be left to human nature, the latter required careful thought. The outcomes of that thinking says a lot about who Charlotte Hardy is.
Possessing one of the most famous surnames in Australian wine without being related to the family that made it so prompted her to adopt the middle name she shared with her grandfather. Charlotte Hardy the winemaker became Charlotte Dalton the brand.
Despite the Basket Range being the epicentre of the hyped “natural” wine scene at the time, Hardy felt her wines didn’t fit with the “ideology above all else” ethos, so she and Ben decamped to the coastal town of Port Elliot, setting up a little winery in a kind of artisan commercial park, surrounded by galleries and, wisely, South Australia’s best coffee roaster. It’s from here she makes wines that remind us that terroir has a human element too, and very best bottles not only reflect the place they were grown but the person who made them. These are wines anchored by skill and detail, and given wings by artistry and heart. They are very Charlotte Hardy. And that’s a genuinely good thing to be.
CHARLOTTE DALTON ‘THIS IS MY VERMENTINO’ 2024
$30
Langhorne Creek fruit pressed to old French oak, allowing extended time on lees to build weight and texture. Lemon pith, green almond, snuffed candles and the salty, ropey scent of a station wagon full of wet beach towels. A waxy fullness to the palate, beautifully weighted, depth without density. Beautiful saline acidity; fine, drying length. 12% alcohol, 94 points
CHARLOTTE DALTON ‘ÆRKEENGEL’ SEMILLON 2020
$42
Dried herbs and fading potpourri, ginger biscuit and lemon curd. Pine needles and lemon barley water. Taut, tight and tangy. Energetic and persistent. Characterful and beautifully idisosyncratic. A much finer palate than the aromatic exuberance promises, elegant and full of finesse. A delicate, almost brittle length. 11.9% alcohol, 95 points
CHARLOTTE DALTON ‘LOVE ME, LOVE YOU’ SHIRAZ 2023
$40
A silk purse full of spice. Plums, blackberries, a little tarragon lift. A bunch of punchy spices: white pepper, mace, coriander seed. Silky and slippery, an elegant flow. Superfine, powdery tannins imposing the gentlest of grips.
13.5% alcohol, 94 points
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