2019 OX HARDY SLATE SHIRAZ - 6x75cl

Tasting Notes

• 

  Goedhuis, October 2021

  The Slate Shiraz is an extraordinary wine as it is made from the original slate open fermenters, last used nearly one hundred years ago by Thomas Hardy himself. This is a spellbinding Shiraz which boasts such a sleek structure and vivid fruit. Texturally, it glides on the palate and sweeps into a dramatic lift which gives freshness and elegance in spades. This is one to lay down and forget about for a while.

• 

  Matthew Jukes, December 2020,
  Score: 19+

  If you take every word that I have written in the 2018 vintage note for slate and swop out the Bandol reference for Cornas from Allemande you will see, once again, that this statesmanlike 2019 Slate Shiraz has nailed it again. If anything this vintage contains even more potential and even deeper wells of thrilling fruit. There are coffee notes, hung game hints, dark chocolate and tar references, but these are filigree details to the all-pervasive, omnipotent Shiraz fruit. Once again, this is not a big wine. This is important to underline. It is a medium weight fellow with mind-bending purity and intensity and this is what makes it so unforgettable and also desirable. Drink 2022 – 2030

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Producer

Ox Hardy

Ox Hardy is the personal passion project of winemaker Andrew ‘Ox’ Hardy, formerly chief winemaker at cult estate Petaluma in the Adelaide Hills. Twenty years ago, he began making tiny amounts of wine for the family to drink from cherished old vines, some first planted in the 1800s by his great great grandfather Thomas Hardy. This McLaren Vale estate has become revered for its small-production Shiraz. They are deeply impressive wines, and as leading wine critic Matthew Jukes says, “No self-respecting wine collector can declare their cellar complete without a few cases of these wines in their racks”. Goedhuis CEO Tom Stopford Sackville first met Andrew Hardy, while harvesting the 1989 vintage at Petaluma in the Adelaide Hills. Roll forward 32 years, Tom and the whole Goedhuis team are understandably excited and honoured to represent Ox Hardy as exclusive UK importer. Ox shares our enthusiasm: "I am delighted and honoured that Goedhuis Co. are importing and distributing my wines in the UK. I worked with Tom at Petaluma in 1989 when we were both young fellas. How fortuitous that 32 years later we are linked through wines that I have been making for some years from the Upper Tintara Vineyard my great-great grandfather bought in 1871. The wines are true expressions of this grand old vineyard and I feel the Goedhuis team is an ideal fit. The portfolio is tight and excellent, representing many of the worlds' great estates, and it is wonderful to be in such company. I look forward to many happy years with Goedhuis Co."