Hardys Alcohol Free Chardonnay

When Hardys launched this product in 2019 their marketing manager was quoted in The Grocer as saying that the drink “offers important wine cues, such as grape style and flavour notes, and strong consumer confidence in the Hardys brand will help to drive purchase on occasions when consumers might be seeking an alternative to alcohol”.  Which says it all.  The use of the word Chardonnay is just a “cue” to pull in unwary punters.   This drink bears as much resemblance to a Chardonnay as downstream run-off resembles the glacier it came from.   Hardys actually tells us that the drink is made from the same grapes as go into their real wine, but tellingly they don’t claim that this drink is made from the same wine.  And then the processed grape something is enhanced with grape juice, sugar and citric acid.  Which is actually all you can taste.

This said, if you can forget that you expected this to taste like the Chardonnay it claimed to be, then I found it to be not a bad drink – light and lemony with some underlying fruitiness.  But my wife hated it – “vinegar” she gasped.   So you may or may not enjoy it, but don’t expect Chardonnay.