HARDY WIZ BLASTS OLD CLONE THEORIES

THE NEW HARDY MOB WILL BE MAKING HERITAGE; NOT BUTCHERING IT ... GEOFF HARDY'S KIDS: BEC, HANNAH, JESS AND SEB. CLICK ON 'EM TO LEARN ABOUT CREATING THE FUTURE ... APOLOGIES FOR USING THE SAME PHOTOGRAPH TWICE, BUT GEOFF WOULD RATHER HAVE THESE STAUNCH VISIONARIES SNAPPED THAN BE RE-RUNNING HIS DETERMINED VISAGE. THESE PEOPLE ARE NOT CLONES!

Geoff Hardy: It's Not A Clone!
All Theories Total Codswallop
Stelzer Unfoxed By Fluffmonger


COMMENT by GEOFF HARDY:

"Noel Chapman was the architect of the current Reynell selection (not clone) which he told me was a process of elimination through three generations of plantings and he told me it was most recently from about 7 separate mother vines. We know that at least one of these is quite virus affected but I suspect it is two, without having done the testing. I understand the ‘current’ Reynell selection is the older Stony Hill planting (1968?) and this is where I have sourced perhaps 400 acres of planting material from, propagated or distributed through my own nursery business and this is the tip of the iceberg in an Australian sense.

"As regards naming the Stony Hill block I think Noey told me this was his doing because of the limestone in the higher part but my memory is very vague on this. Apparently there’s no mention of Stony Hill’s existence in Margaret Hopton’s significant writings on the Reynell family.

"David O’Leary mentioned a year or so ago that Noey is still alive so I may be able to find out a little more.

"The block has produced some great wine that I know of but I lost contact with its quality ratings in the late eighties.

"It certainly has a lot of history and is in the wrong hands at the moment."

(GEOFF HARDY'S FAMILY BUILT THE THOMAS HARDY & SONS WINE COMPANY, WHICH PURCHASED AND RESTORED CHATEAU REYNELLA BEFORE BECOMING BRL-HARDY WHICH WAS EVENTUALLY SWALLOWED BY CONSTELLATION WINES.)

COMMENT by TYSON STELZER:

"As you suggest in your response in your blog to my Spectator piece, it’s important that we get our facts right, but you have accused me of “regurgitating standard Constellation PR fluff” when the point that you refer to was not suggested to me by Constellation at all.

"If it turns out the clone did originate from the vineyard in question, I will be eager to report this. Constellation has been unable to confirm this to date, and I have not found evidence elsewhere to support the assertion.

"As stated in the article, "The Stony Hill vineyard at Old Reynella in McLaren Vale was first planted to Cabernet Sauvignon in 1838 by the district's first settler, John Reynell." Not the mid-1840s, as suggested elsewhere.

"One reason for the assertion that "It's more likely that the clone originated from the nearby Reynella vineyard, planted by Reynell shortly after Stony Hill" is that the clone was only brought into the country in 1838 and into McLaren Vale in 1844. It is more likely, then, from a vineyard planted after Stony Hill.

"This information was not provided to me by Constellation or by Sheralee Davies, although I have made a point of speaking with her about these matters."

TYSON STELZER IS REACTING TO MY CRITICISM IN THE PIECE BELOW

K1 BY GEOFF HARDY (AND HUNGRY TRIBE)

These Hardys Will Not Be Eaten
New Wave Of Smarts Cross Range
by PHILIP WHITE - a version of this appeared in The Independent Weekly on 8 MAY 09

In McLaren Vale, they call it “over the range” ... “up on the range”. It’s over the Willunga Fault, the handsomely revegetated escarpment to the east of the Willunga Basin.

In the ’eighties, all the McLaren Vale vineyards were in the basin. Over the Range, Brian Croser was preaching his Piccadilly gospel; Ashton Hills was established, Geoff Weaver, Prue Henschke and Tim Knappstein were opening the Lenswood ridge, Lloyd Light had a vineyard and winery above Clarendon, and unless you went way up north to the serious visionaries like Karl Seppelt and David Wynn, that was about it for Adelaide Hills/South Mount Lofty Ranges viticulture.

Geoff Hardy had wine in his gizzards from the womb. He helped make Australia’s first seriously good – and probably the only – commercial pinot noir in 1978, the famous Hardy’s Keppoch. That neat, nutty, revolutionary red made from a champagne clone grown broadacre near Padthaway was still good a decade beyond its use-by date, by which time Hardy’s had eaten Reynella, only to be eaten by Berri-Renmano, which was eventually dutifully eaten by Constellation.

Geoff has never been eaten. He’d established himself as a canny, clean, swift establisher of vineyards by 1980 when he bought the Willunga piedmont vineyard, Pertaringa, with fellow viticulturer Ian Leask. Since then, he’s planted over 3000 hectares of vines and consulted to over 200 different vineyards in Australia, France and Italy.

THE OFFICE, TASTING ROOM AND FUNCTION CENTRE AT GEOFF HARDY'S K1

















He took me for a drive around his gorgeous Kuitpo vineyard the other day, in Greg Trott’s old Audi wagon, which seemed utterly fitting. In the back, where most people keep their kids and dogs, Geoff had a crowd of baby grüner vetliner vines, all swaying to look out the window.

“I’m toughening them up, he grinned. “Trying to encourage them to put a bit of wood on”. The car, with all that glass, is warmer. An incubator.

So why Kuitpo, the place with the unpronounceable name that nobody knows the origins of?

“I’d been looking for the ideal cool climate vineyard site for eight or nine years”, he said. This was the fourth place I’d tried to buy. It wasn’t for sale. I found it through the Lands Titles Office, and contacted the owners. Bought it in 1986; begun planting in 1987.”

The reason I’m writing this story now is that Geoff’s wines, labelled K1 by Geoff Hardy, are suddenly very, very authoritative. Geoff would say that’s been gradual, as the vineyard matures and everybody in the winery gets their head around what sort of flavours it wants to produce, but in my case, it’s been the fruit of the last two years’ releases that caught my attention. The wines have become confidently stylised and enticing.

And that’s just the beginning. Apart from the usual staples, and the baby grüners in back of his car, Geoff has planted arneis, dolcetto, durif, graciano, lagrein, marsanne, montepulciano, picolit, primitivo, roussanne, and savignin blanc B, which was called albarino until the CSIRO admitted it wasn’t actually alborino just a few weeks back.

The vineyard plunges dramatically through the sclerophyllous scrub between the Kuitpo forest and the edge of the Willunga escarpment, on sand and clay and reefs of ironstone so pure that Lang Hancock would squirm.

“Few of these things have stood the test of time yet”, Geoff says. “Like arneis. What will it do? Like the nineties had a cool chunk in the middle, 95-96, and I thought ‘fantastic! Pinot and chardonnay country!’, but with global warming the ripening curve has moved two and a half weeks to the left and we’re growing really good shiraz and cabernet, so who knows?”

One dude who’s learning to know rather abruptly is winemaker Shane Harris, a former chef who’s beginning to really make a mark at the contract winery at the foot of the scarp, McLaren Vintners. Shane’s now got the room to apply his high gastronomic intelligence to his wine science – something that’s pretty thin on the ground amongst the white coat brigade.

The wines are quite different, of course, but K1 by Geoff Hardy and Shane Harris has developed an authoritative, seamless style and stance that reminds me somehow of the way Wolf Blass and John Glaetzer gave Wolf Blass wines a trophy-winning presence that changed the whole wine business in the mid-seventies. There was no stopping them; no way they wouldn’t be recognised. Which is happening now, increasingly, to Geoff’s brand.

THE NEW WAVE OF HARDYS, L-R: BEC, HANNAH, JESS AND SEB - WAITING FOR A WINERY!

Just in time, really. His four kids are all out working in the wine business, but they’re ready to move in on Dad. This is the beginnings of new Hardy dynasty: the momentum is almost urgent in its confidence and detremination.

So. When will he build them a winery?

“Well, Whitey”, he says, wheeling the Trottmobile over a spectacular ironstone knob that’s just been ripped for vineyard, “it was always going to be right here. But the money wasn’t quite right, so this is where I’m gonna plant these grüners. If the kids want their winery, they’ll have to convince me to pull a vineyard out. So it won’t be a snap decision.”

Hand Crafted by Geoff Hardy Adelaide Hills Arneis 2008
$18; 13% alcohol; screw cap; 93 points
The savvy Linda Domas made this wine from Kuitpo fruit. That means it’s out there, as far as pioneering goes. Barolo bianco hits kangaroo ground! Pear, marzipan, honeydew melon, chick peas, peanut butter, artichoke: them’s words I don’t use much on wine descripto. But that’s what swam around my glass, with grand mealy tannins and, contrary to Auntie Jancis’ claim that arneis has low acidity, plenty of that too. It makes perfect sense, planting a white from Italy’s piedmont on land like K1, but it still seems freaky. The result is profound: this is a big new flavour indeed! Cool pork cassoulet.

K1 by Geoff Hardy Adelaide Hills Cabernet Tempranillo 2006
$18; 14% alcohol; screw cap; 92+++ points
Yuppie Itie wine perves will know Sassicaia, the hyper-priced super-Tuscan red. Forget it. Here comes the Sassikuitpo, the Spanish version via the ironstone and kangaroo turds of the Hardy vineyard way up past the Base Camp on K1. Neat, clean, seamless, and as tightly-formed as a leg of cured Iberian ham, which it manages to smell like, this is one for the long haul dungeon as much as Norberto’s house of meat right now. And when you’ve drunk it all, which will take a month, we’ll get the 07, which is even better, with all its violets and lavendar atop the Zorro boots. They’re both stunning wines!

I shall be posting notes on all the K1 by Geoff Hardy wines on DRANKSTER later this week.