‍Written by Mary Rice for City Newspaper. January 31, 2018.

‍On a wall inside the production facility at Living Roots Wine & Co., two clocks hang side by side: one shows the local time in Rochester, the other the time in Adelaide, Australia. It’s a striking reminder of the transnational nature of Living Roots, an urban winery which opened its tasting room on University Avenue in November of 2017. Run by husband and wife Sebastian and Colleen Hardy, Living Roots makes and sells wines in both Upstate New York and South Australia, and aims to bring together the best of both regions.

Sebastian Hardy, the head winemaker at Living Roots, comes from a long line of winemakers in McLaren Vale, just south of Adelaide. His great-great-great grandfather founded wine company Thomas Hardy & Sons in 1853, and the business remained in the family for the next 140 years. (It is now Accolade Wines). Sebastian’s father, Geoff Hardy, began his career at Hardys, but started his own business, Wines by Geoff Hardy, in 1980. Sebastian himself “bounced around making wines at different wineries” in different countries after getting his degree in Viticulture and Enology, he says.

Colleen Hardy (née Hurley) is a Fairport native and Mercy High school graduate. After studying marketing at Michigan State University, she began her career in marketing research in Chicago. After a couple of years, she says “cubicle life” started to feel stale. “I realized marketing research would be a lot more interesting if it was about a product I cared about,” she says.