BRL Hardy have welcomed back into the family fold a bottle of 1867 Tintara Vineyards Association Claret, which is believed to be the oldest intact bottle of Australian wine in existence. It’s a well-traveled bottle, having been taken in the early 1870s to the UK by the then South Australian Governor Sir James Fergusson to show the English how good Antipodean wine had become. Its whereabouts remained a mystery until an auction at the London house of Christies in 1977, when it was purchased by an Australian wine collector who later brought it back to this country. Hardys first approached him in 2001 regarding a possible purchase of the wine, and that deal has now been struck. The wine is from the original Tintara vineyard in McLaren Vale, which was planted in 1862 to around ninety acres of shiraz, mataro, cabernet sauvignon, grenache and sauvignon blanc. The winery was built on the site in 1863, which exists today as something of a ruin with a medieval feel to it. I visited the site in early 2001 and was struck by the simplicity and effectiveness of its gravity-fed design and the sheer quality and workmanship of its surviving open slate fermenters. 1867 was actually the first year a major crop was harvested at Tintara and this wine, believed to be a blend of each of the four red varieties planted there, was a deeply flavoured and robust wine originally described by Tintara’s owner, Dr Alexander Kelly, as being ‘fit for heroes’. Sadly, the entire Tintara enterprise was poorly managed and the company’s assets and operations were put up for sale in 1873, just six years after this historic bottle was made. Although it is believed to have tried to continue trading, Thomas Hardy made an offer of purchase to its liquidators in 1876. The brand has since remained as part of what evolved into BRL Hardy, or Constellation Brands!
