Fun, friends
and merriment.
I love wine. I have been making wine all over the world for two and a half decades. I have been drinking wine all over the world for longer. I love how I feel when I walk through vineyards. I love the journey of turning grapes into wine. I love to watch the personalities develop in every single barrel and I love to observe the effect of the years passing on bottles of wine. To drink my friend's wines brings me so much pleasure as does discovering wines from artists and places that I don't know.
I think wine can be felt. I get so much joy making the Charlotte Dalton wines that surely, you will feel joy when you drink them. I firmly believe that a wine must be made with a happy heart and a content soul. And that is, simply, why I make the Charlotte Dalton Wines; to bring me joy, happiness and contentedness and to share and hopefully pass those feelings on to you through the wines.
Since I started my brand I been honoured to have received so many accolades which I think prove, if you love what you do, you can produce something others will love and you will be recognised with success. A few months into the release of my first wines, in 2016, James Halliday named Charlotte Dalton Wines as one of the best 10 new wineries in Australia and gave my winery 5 stars. I was top ten finalist in the 2017 Young Gun of Wine. In 2019 I had a very successful end to the year. I was in the last weeks of my pregnancy with my son Sammy and I was so very proud to receive these amazing Awards; my 2017 love me love you shiraz picked up best wine of show, best shiraz of show and best single vineyard wine of show in the Adelaide Hills Wine Show and my 2018 Eliza Pinot Noir was Judged the best wine out of hundreds of entries in the Adelaide Review Hot 100. The good things kept on flowing, in 2020 I was chosen as a recipient for the Langhorne Creek Project 5255 and was given two ton of Fiano to make wine from. This fuelled a love for the Langhorne Creek and Fiano for me, and I now produce the wine every year as part of my core range. In 2021 I was named the national Young Gun of Wine - this was just such an honour to receive and I still feel teary with pride to think about it. Although I haven’t entered big competitions for many years the wines continue to pick up medals and excellent reviews - it is truly humbling. You can read about the various awards here if you wish.
In case you were wondering; Dalton is my middle name and was my Grandfather Hardy's christian name. When my 3 brothers and I were little children, my amazing and dearly missed mother, used to tuck us into bed at night and say "love you, love me - love me, love you, these are the names of my Semillon and Shiraz, two first wines I made under my own brand.
Charlotte Hardy x