Hardys Tintara Cellars, Mile End

South Australia owes much to its early band of pioneers, and among the most celebrated was Thomas Hardy. At twenty years of age he took passage from England in the 640 ton barque, British Empire, carrying 159 adults and 169 children, and reached Adelaide in 1850. His family were farmers and his inclinations was to follow the plough; so he took his first job on the farm and vineyards of John Reynell in the southern valleys and then moved on to a cattle property at Normanville. Like most young men, Hardy joined the gold rush to Victoria but he soon found that the diggings were overcrowded and he commenced over-landing cattle from Normanville to be butchered on the goldfields. This roistering life was really not to his taste and he returned to Adelaide to marry his cousin, Joanna, and to settle down.

He bought land on the River Torrens, calling his property Bankside, where he planted wine grapes and established a market-garden and orchard. He built a cellar beneath his new house and during 1857 produced his first vintage in three one hundred gallon casks. Two years later Hardy tackled the arduous journey to England to further his knowledge of the wine trade. Hardy found that the reputation of Australian wines was abysmally low, mainly because the local winemakers had sent reds that were insufficiently matured and fortified and, what was worse, they had been blended with cheap continental wines. This reputation was to persist for a hundred years, and not so long ago Dorothy Sayers caused her hero, Lord Peter Wimsey, when offered a glass of wine, to spit it out and exclaim, “Australian wine, pah!”

Thomas Hardy returned to preach the doctrine of quality, and in 1864 he produced 14,000 gallons of fine wine. He had brought grapes from the vineyards to the south of Adelaide and in 1876 he purchased the Tintara Winery near McLaren Vale. Through sheer hard work and business ability he was able to withstand the crises which plagued the wine trade and, confident of the future, he built a substantial bluestone winery and showrooms in Currie Street in 1881.

One of Thomas Hardy’s dearest wishes came to fruition when, it turns, his three sons entered the family business. The quantity of grapes processed each year increased to such an extent that new cellars became essential, and in 1893 these were erected in Mile End. The building had a frontage of 188 feet and a depth of 40 feet, and was of two storeys, the upper floor being supported by jarrah and iron stanchions to carry the huge weight when the vaults were full. The architecture is reminiscent of the chateaus of France, and above the entrance arch is a tower in which tanks were installed for blending. The storage capacity at the new premises was 80.000 gallons. The complex included an up-to-date wine laboratory which produced pure yeast cultures; stables were provided at the rear, and a six-roomed cottage accommodated the manager and his family.

On Saturday 22 October 1904, at a time when the River Torrens was dry, fire broke out at Bankside which was three quarters of a mile from the nearest water-main. Horse-drawn fire- engines arrived promptly at the scene from Adelaide, Thebarton and Hindmarsh but there was little that firemen could do. Then one of the officers had an inspiration. He lowered pipes form the engines into the cellars and played streams of red wine on to the blaze at 400 gallons a minute. Although this move was eventually successful in putting out the flames the place was in ruins and the loss was estimated at £25,000. The house was rebuilt, but it was not considered worthwhile to re-establish the winery, and wine-making was transferred to the Mile End plant. Bankside was occupied by members of the Hardy family unit the 1920s when it passed in to the hands of a market gardener. Recently the old house was demolished to make way for a bulk store.

From information supplied by the West Torrens Historical Society.