Thomas Hardy starts his wine empire in 1853 with Bankside vineyard beside River Torrens west of Adelaide city
Thomas Hardy and his first winery Bankside, beside the River Torrens west of Adelaide city, in 1853.
Images courtesy Thomas Hardy and Sons
Thomas Hardy built his South Australian wine empire from three quarters of an acre of Shiraz vines he planted in 1854 beside the River Torrens in what became the suburb of Underdale, three miles from Adelaide city centre.
From a Devon farming family, Hardy and future wife Joanna Holbrook left England and arrived in South Australia on the British Empire in 1850. Hardy was soon working with John Reynell at Reynell Farm in the southern vale where he learned winemaking skills from German fellow workers. After two years, Hardy left for Victorian goldfields with success as a butcher and droving cattle to the diggings from Yankalilla.
He worked on a station near Normanville before selecting at a site in 1853 next to the River Torrens, west of Adelaide city, for his Bankside vineyard. In 1854, he planted two acres of fruit trees, mainly oranges, and his first shiraz vineyard that was enlarged in 1856, adding an acre of muscatel table grapes in 1861.
Hardy made his first wine in 1857 and two hogsheads sent to England in 1859 were one of South Australia’s first wine exports. By 1863, Bankside vineyards covered 35 acres of grenache, mataro, muscat, roussillon, shiraz and zante grapes– as well as growing olives (Hardy's Mammoth), oranges, lemons, almonds and vines for raisin and currants. He bought "Brookside", 24 acres at Marion southwest of Adelaide, in 1862, planted it with grapes and put John Western in charge. (Western was followed in 1884 by son-in-law Arthur Quick, who took it over in 1910.)
Hardy also brought grapes from other Adelaide area vignerons and. his vintage had reached 27,000 gallons (100,000 litres) by 1879. Hardy had bought Tintara vineyards at McLaren Vale in 1876 from pioneer winemaker A.C. Kelly.
Tintara grew with the buoyant British wine market but Hardy kept links with Adelaide city and suburbs. Thomas Hardy & Sons Ltd had wine stores and offices at Mile End and in Currie Street, Adelaide. Hardy also opened Adelaide city’s first wine bar.
In 1874, with A. Bickford and Sons, W.N. Crowder and others he founded a bottle works in Chief Street, Brompton, from 1875, that became the South Australian Glass Works Co. Ltd. He founded a jam company with premises at Dequetteville Terrace, Kent Town, later used by Adelaide Malting and Brewing Company and now an apartments block. Hardy planted grape varieties at Adelaide Botanic Garden but these were later removed for more recreation space.
The large Mile End cellars were built in 1893 when Thomas Hardy and Sons were South Australia's largest wine producers. The Bankside winery was destroyed by fire in 1904 and never rebuilt. It was sold to F. G. Gill and homestead was demolished in 1962.
