Today I bought half a dozen bottles of Hardy's Chardonnay from Pak 'n' Save at $6.89 a bottle. This is a very good price for an OK Chardonnay. The wine is luscious and peachy and although it lacks any woody structure and backbone is at least clean which can't be said for some of the $10 NZ offerings I've drunk recently. This used to be Richard (of RBB) and Shelley's wine of choice. I think that they have moved on from it now but, if they return they won't be disappointed. No, buying this wine was not the senior moment even though I have a long history with this wine. I identified the gap in the market for Hardy's fifteen years ago for a 'consumer chardonnay', selected the label and launched the product which grew into a 2 million bottle brand, half of which was Chardonnay. It has declined in volume a bit now but I'm pleased to see that the wine is good and honest and over-delivers at this price that's for sure. No, the senior moment was paying for the wine at Pak 'n' Save, carefully packing it into a small carton (at Pak 'n' save as the name suggests you have to pack your own groceries) and then walking out with the 7 corn cobs (for $5) that I had also bought leaving the wine behind. I was almost to the car before an alert shop assistant chased me out with the wine. I made excuses and said that it had been a long day etc., accepted the wine and shamefacedly left.
