Barrel Boys

There are plenty of siblings who have made good in thew wine business, but few identical twins who've excelled as winemakers. Colin and John Glaetzer, who both ply their trade in the Barossa Valley , are an exceptional case.

John has been Wolf Blass's right-hand man since the early days in the '70s and chief red winemaker at Bilyara for a quarter of a century. Colin, after a 10-year stint with Barossa Valley Estate, recently set up his own wine company with his wife, Judith.

Glaetzer Wines is based in Tanunda and Colin leads a double life: his bread-and-butter job is as chief winemaker for a new outfit called Barossa Vintners, a contract winemaking business, also in Tanunda.

There are 10 shareholders - including Stephen Henschke and Rockford 's Robert O'Callaghan - in Barossa Vintners, which processes more than 10,000 tonnes of grapes for various companies. Presumably in a very small corner of the winery, Colin makes hhis own wine for the family's 3,500 case brand, simply called Glaetzer. It is a super-premium brand, with eight wines and nothing under $20 a bottle.

Perhaps the most intriguing sidelight is the future of the Glaetzer name. Colin and Judy appear to have raised no fewer than three winemakers. Eldest son Sam, 24, is an environmental engineer with a penchant for winemaking. He works for Mildara Blass and "lives on aeroplanes" as he travels between its 21 sites looking after the waste water. He worked the 1998 vintage with Nigel Dolan at Saltram, one of Mildara's Barossa wineries, and wants to get into wineries full time. He is now a trainee winemaker and starts the oenology course at Adelaide University this year. And he recently married Kirsty Follett, assistant to Nick Walker at Krondorf, where she makes sparkling wine for Yellowglen.

The second Glaetzer son is Ben, 21, already a winemaking graduate from Adelaide University who's worked several vintages with his dad and is now full time at Tyrrell's in the Hunter.

The youngest is Nick, 17, a mechatronics student at Adelaide who may also end up in winemaking according to his dad. Nick worked at Barossa Vintners with Colin last vintage and plans to repeat the experience. Meanwhile he works in the Glaetzer Wines cellar door sales in his spare time and has a formidable reputation as a salesman.

That's an impressive line-up for one winemaker's progeny, but what about the other twin? John Glaetzer has two daughters, and neither is in wine. One lives in Switzerland and the other has just given birth to.wait for it.identical twins. John recently moved aside to allow ex-Chapel Hill winemaker Caroline Dunn to share red winemaking duties at the burgeoning Wolf Blass Bilyara winery.

In 1966, Colin and John both started at Roseworthy Agricultural College , then the only place in Australia where you could study winemaking. (Its courses have been absorbed into Adelaide University .) Colin worked at Tyrrell's in between stints at college and proudly recalls that he was at Tyrrell's when the first Vat 47 Chardonnay was made, and confirms it was made in a barrel numbered 47, which is 'still in the same place in the cellar'.

'My career in wine really started when I was a kid in Adelaide ," he says. "I used to work at Normans when they had a winery in the suburbs, washing bottles and doing cellar work. I was there four or five years. Dad also worked there."

The Glaetzer boys were born in the Clare Valley , where the family had a farm and small vineyard. They moved to Whyalla in search of work, then down to Adelaide where their father had a carrying business. "In his later years he gave trucking away and worked at Normans as a dog's body. That was under Len Norman, who also employed Wolf Blass, and that's where the Glaetzer/Blass association started," says Colin.

"At the Adelaide Wine Show, it must have been in '64 or '65, Wolf lined up 10 glasses of wine at the exhibitors' tasting and put them in what he reckoned was the order of quality, then asked John to do it. John put the glasses in exactly the same order and that impressed Wolf. They've worked together ever since."

In contrast to his brother, Colin had many masters. After Tyrrell's and the 'plonkie' course, he [Colin] went to Renmano in the Riverland for two vintages, 1971 - 72. There he met his wife, Judy, who was the quality control chemist. They went overseas and Colin worked at Averys in Bristol while Judy worked at Bristols other noted wine business: Harvey 's, of Bristol Cream sherry fame.

Then Colin stopped in Burgundy , France, to work for six months, including the vintage with the shipper Remoissenet in Beaune. "I got back to Australia two days before Sam was born. I didn't have a cent left. I borrowed money for the cab fare," he says.

He went to work for Seppelt when it was still family owned- first at Rutherglen and later Great Western, where he was senior white winemaker for the Seppelt group between 1980 and '84. Then followed 11 vintages at Barossa Valley Estate where he finally got to know the Barossa intimately..