Wine in the Blood

The Glaetzer name is well known in the Barossa Valley. Colin was at Seppelt and Barossa Valley Estate before setting up his own business in Tanunda seven years ago, with wife Judith and 26-year-old son Ben. With other South Australian winemakers including Rockford, Henschke and Woodstock, they established Barossa Vintners to make wine for the nine partners with a few contract winemaking jobs on the side.

Colin's twin brother John has made wine at Wolf Blass for more than 30 years, but it's Colin and Judith's family that fulfil the cliché about having wine in their blood. There are five winemakers among their three sons and their wives, including Ben's wife Victoria, who makes wine at Yalumba, and Sam and Kirsty, who both work for Beringer Blass.

Colin and Ben also market their own Glaetzer brand, as a kind of eccentric sideshow to all this big-company hard yakka. The Glaetzer brand stands for red wines only, with the emphasis firmly on premium Barossa shiraz.

There are two, and both are sumptuous. The flagship is labelled simply Glaetzer Barossa Shiraz and costs $60. It's made from very old (about 80 years) dry-grown (unirrigated) vines in the Ebenezer district in the north end of the Barossa Valley, where fruit for many famous Barossa reds is grown. Ebenezer was the source of Barossa Valley Estate E & E Shiraz and Ebenezer Shiraz, which Colin created when he worked for BVE.

The "second label" is Glaetzer Bishop Shiraz, a wine carrying Judith's maiden name. It's produced from mainly 30- to 60-year-old vines and has much of the same character as its big brother. That is, it's a robust regional shiraz in a savoury style. It's big and very ripe but not porty, jammy or sweet-tasting like many of the fashionable modern styles. As such, it's a good food wine.

Unfortunately, the drought restricted the oldest dry-grown vines to 20 per cent of a normal crop in 2003, so they're praying for rain in the Barossa.

The 1999 Glaetzer and Bishop are current. The Glaetzer is youthful, plummy and blackberry-ish, with earthy and dried autumn leaf aromas. It's powerful but savoury and complex, with a degree of elegance. The '99 Bishop is a junior version of the same, a touch more evolved, with peppery, mocha, chocolate aromas. Both go well with osso buco.