Ben Glaetzer - the real story of the prodigal son of Australian shiraz

Campbell Mattinson, Wine Front Monthly
 Nov 2005

Ben Glaetzer sets up the glasses, just like a normal person. He's not. He grabs a dozen or so wines, opens a few, finds one that’s been ruined by cork taint - a 2004 Godolphin cabernet shiraz, ahhhh! - and after quickly showing it to me, pops the cork back in and walks into a nearby office, plonks it on the worker’s desk, and says, 'Here, have this with your lunch'. He walks back smiling. Then gets back to lining up the glasses. Where were we?   No, he hasn't yet mentioned that he's just been made a Baron of the Barossa, a prestigious title that he just happens to be the youngest ever recipient of - come to think of it, over the few hours that we talk, he never mentions it. He hasn't yet mentioned that earlier this year he was awarded the similarly prestigious Qantas Australian Young Winemaker of the Year title - actually, he never mentions this either. Nor does he ever mention Robert Parker Junior, even though just a week or two earlier the world's most powerful wine critic had lavished a series of the wines that he makes - Mitolo, Glaetzer, Amon Ra, Godolphin, Heartland - with high scores, many of them between 95 and 100, out of 100. Come to think of it, there's a lot that he leaves out: that he took over Barossa Vintners, the large contract winemaking facility on the Rowland Flat side of Tanunda, as a mere 23 year old, that he took over the winemaking at Glaetzer when he was barely 25 (even though his dad, Colin, is a famous winemaking figure, the creator of Barossa Valley Estate Black Pepper Shiraz, and a Barossa Baron himself); that he's already been married and separated and at the same time lauded as a king of the modern face of Barossan red winemaking - all by the age of 28. At this rate he'll live our or four lifetimes while the rest of us struggle to fit in one. At this rate, we have a legend in the making on our hands. 

He doesn't mention Parker, and his scores, but I do. I ask if the whole production of Glaetzer and Amon Ra and Mitolo and the other wines could as easily be all sent off to the US in one hit, instead of fiddled to 25 different countries, as they currently are. "When you’re getting scores like you’re getting," I ask, "and you’re now getting them every year - wouldn't it be easier?"  Not that I want this to happen- but for easy dollars, it must be tempting.  "But I don't ever want to be seen as just a Parker darling," Ben says, and he's not taking the ratings of Parker for granted, he's just keeping sight of the larger game. "The idea is that it's not about those short term credits, it's about people seeing that you have integrity, that you believe in what you're doing, and that no matter what happens along the way, you're going to stick to what you set out to do, which is to make wine that you yourself believe to be good, and to encourage loyalty. "You know, I can't wait for, I don’t know, 30 years down the track, when people start lining up and comparing the Barossa with Bordeaux - or whatever - but with everyday wines, not just top-level wines, as interest and knowledge of individual regions and subregions grows. I like the fact that we're slowly moving away from 'South-East Australia' and learning more about regions. It's where wine gets interesting." Interesting.

The deep, dark shiraz wines of the Barossa Valley hardly require introduction or praise; their renown is well and worthy enough. What could be questioned though is whether the wines of the Barossa Valley, in the past, have been 'interesting'. Bold, dark, and impressive, no doubt. Interesting?  "I have to admit," I say, half-way through tasting a range of Ben's wines and fast finding it hard to hide my surprise at the fruit freshness of them, "I have to admit that I have actually been to Glaetzer wines once before. I would've been in 2000 - I dropped in to the cellar door here (when it was open; it no longer is) and tasted the wines, and while I thought they were pretty good, I've never wanted to come back, and have never particularly wanted to follow up on future releases."  And as I say it, I realise that I may have actually been swallowing as bit of the product - and it might be going to my head.   But Ben Glaetzer jumps on the comment - and the real truth of Glaetzer wines, and the whole spectacular progression, is unveiled.

"To be honest," he says, "I hate those big over-oaked styles - and I've never liked them, and have never wanted to drink them. Wine to me is all about integrity of vineyards - it's not about big heavy oak.  A lot of companies go, right, that’s off 120 year old vines, so that wine is $100. That's off 25 year old vines, so that wine is $20 - but to me, that's crap. You have to go on flavour, on what the vineyard is offering you - you make your decision on the flavours the grapes offer you. "Grapes, how they ripen, the rate they ripen, the flavour they give - if you go on that, it makes a huge difference on the end quality of the wine, on its overall structure. It pays so many dividends to actually taste the
grapes and make your assessments on that - it constantly amazes me how many people don't do it like that."

It was something that amazed Max Schubert, creator of Penfolds Grange, too - and it's something that will amaze the best winemakers forever and always. The more I look at wine, the more it seems to be a distinguishing factor. No matter what your assumptions are, the fact is this: most winemakers or vignerons actually aren't very good at assessing the flavour and quality of grapes according only to what their mouth tells them, and so make decisions on appearance or sugar readings or history or vine age.  I've even seen wine companies with written rules, which state that all grapes must be picked on Baume (sugar readings), and not on taste. These two approaches - mouth, and sensibility, verses technology and sugar readings - are compellingly different. They are the difference, in a way, between winemaking as an art, and winemaking as a science - and ever since Maurice O'Shea in the 1930s, it's been clear that winemaking as a science is effective and reliable, but winemaking as an art produces the pinnacle results. Max Schubert, and Maurice O'Shea, constantly walked the vine rows, tastings grapes, making decisions, and listening to the music upon their tongue – and it wasn’t (excuse the pun) just lip-service.

Max Schubert. Penfolds Grange - there's another comparison here with Ben Glaetzer, or another point of interest, though in an opposite direction. Because it's clear that Ben Glaetzer is one of a few leading a revolution in the Barossa Valley here - a revolution largely away from American oak, and more importantly away from new oak, with small plots of vineyard and region more important than large-scale blends. This is a massive move away from the revolution that Max Schubert created in the early 1950s: which was all about small new American oak, barrel fermentation, strong tannin and simply sourcing the very best, and most suitable, grapes from as far afield as was logistically possible. It has been a great legacy, and an all-pervading one.

From Rockford Basket Press (made from the grapes of 37 different growers) to Jacob’s Creek to Bin 28, blending and American oak has ruled - as, often, have sizeable volumes. In this way, the icons of Australian wine have owed more to a Bordeaux model than a Burgundy, individual-plot model. This is changing. Rapidly. And winemakers like Ben
Glaetzer lead the change.  Land, freshness of fruit, a low or non-existent impression of oak, and complexities derived from the fruit itself or from Burgundy-like winemaking is the manner of this new way. The days when the Barossa was a region of Grange and baby Grange imitators, as it so recently was, are now closing down - even if many of these wines still exist. When you look at the acclaimed wines of Ben Glaetzer, and also Torbreck and Two Hands and Burge Family Draycott and even Kaesler Old Bastard Shiraz, you see a wealth of wines showing moderate or no oak character, that are filled with fine but not excessive tannin, and which despite their fruit concentration drink well from release. These are fruit driven wines, pushing to luxury levels. "I want the super-wines to be highly drinkable," Ben says at one point. And at another he says, "We try to give the $12 range the same attention, and often the same methods, as we give the Amon Ra.” If I spin this around, and re-phrase it, what Ben (and the taste of the wines themselves) is suggesting is that he’s making a $90 Amon Ra like a it’s a $12 wine - the difference between the two mostly being that the grapes that go into the Amon Ra taste better, or have a lot more to them. If the mythology of Grange has been that it was inspired by Bordeaux, the mythology of this new order may indeed be that they're inspired by the easy-drinking wines of the world. They're the ultimate expression of easy drinking. This is a fine wine movement that could really catch on.  This is a fine wine movement arguably propelled by people, like Ben, who drink a lot of Italian wines. This is a fine wine movement that arguably goes some further way towards breaking the nexus between ultimate quality and an ultimate demand that all quality wine need be cellared: when you have flavours as fresh and (importantly) distinctive and all-encompassing as this, are secondary, aged additions really necessary?  It becomes, increasingly, a personal choice. "Even when I’m making Amon Ra," Ben says, "I want people to be able to sit down and drink it. And it's interesting, I’ve shown these wines to a lot of people in a lot of countries - in the second half of last year I was home for four nights out of four months - and people like them equally as much in Europe as they do in Australia or the US. People even say to us that they think our wines are elegant - which I think is great." "And what do you think," I say, "about where the influence for this 'new' face of the Barossa’ style of wine is coming from?   I mean, it wasn’t all that long ago that just about everyone would have said that, if you dug hard enough, Grange was the beacon."

Ben: "I don’t think it's really about the wines being styled on anything - they're styled on their vineyards or on the character and structure of the fruit, rather than on other wines."
WFM: "But the change in the oak, the change in the brightness of some of these new-styled wines is quite marked." And when I say that, I’m referring to wines like the 2004 Glaetzer reds, the better Torbreck reds of the past few years, the wines of Kalleske.
Ben: "It has to be remembered, that 15 years ago there wasn't even a lot of good oak around. I also think that when you’ve travelled overseas a bit, and looked at wines from other countries, you start to get a pretty good idea of what constitutes a good wine, as a opposed to what is actually just a style."

And there, again, is the thing - look at the Australian winemakers today who are really making waves, and wines of high interest, and see a group of people with an admiration of the wines of Australia, but with a world view of what their real targets are, and what standards they would like to achieve - and whether or not they achieve these targets is determined by what their own senses tell them, rather than what wine shows tell them. The number of times I’ve seen ordinary Australian wines win medals or trophies at overseas shows...

Which brings us to a critical point in the story of Ben Glaetzer - and perhaps the defining one. How the hell did a young winemaker not far into his twenties get the gig as head winemaking honcho at Barossa Vintners (not only owned by the Glaetzers but by a long list of wine luminaries, including Robert O’Callaghan and the Henschkes), and within a few years take over the reigns at the family winery, Glaetzer?  How did he then convince his family that a complete change in wine style was in order - a change away from the wine style that had partly made his father, and his uncle (John Glaetzer, of Wolf Blass Black Label and John’s Blend fame) local legends? With the force of that back-history, the wines of Glaetzer are the last I would have guessed to be among the leaders of the new Barossa wine style. "It’s actually a long story," Ben says - "though the short version of it is that Dad has always drunk a bit of overseas wine, so ... he was fairly open to ideas." And with that, Ben Glaetzer smiles, and with it the force of his persuasive qualities can only be imagined. Put it this way, Ben Glaetzer might be young, but he’s also certain, and that certainty is no doubt intoxicating. He also seems to understand what makes wine, and wine drinkers, tick: not surprising considering that he grew up in and around wine and winemaking, and used to wheel his bike around Barossa Valley Estate as if it was his back-yard. Indeed there was a pivotal scene: Ben got top grades at high school, and was set on becoming a surgeon - and still lives with that ambition - when, on the cusp of starting University, he road his bike around the winery one fragrant summer's day and decided: no, wine is for me. I will make wine. He did - at Tyrrell's in the Hunter Valley, a king of drinkable wines - among other places, and it is worth considering the role of Barossa Vintners itself: it's a winery that takes in grapes from all sorts of sources, and at times has made wines for 40 different clients in a single vintage, making as many as 1500 different wines across scores of different varieties - yes, in one season. It is something of an intimidating wine factory, but it is a wine factory with an extraordinary leaning towards tiny batches: there are lots of tanks, but they are very small tanks. Ben is young, but he's already made more individual, different wines than many make in a lifetime.

So he walks into the family winery in 2002, looks at the wines and the rate they're selling at, and thinks: no, this is not the way. He immediately works at convincing his family that they not release any of the 2000 vintage Glaetzer reds, and so they don’t ("it was something of a low ebb,” Ben now says).  He says - and this is the way to a wine drinker’s heart - "never make a decision based on selling a box of wine. Make your decisions based on selling a box of wine every year for ten years". He keeps all access open to the 40 and 60 and 80 and 100 and 120 year old vines that the Glaetzer have been using, many of them grown in the soft, red soils of the Ebenezer region of the Barossa, and then hand picked. He then works towards showing off this fruit brilliance proper. The turnaround in the wines is rapid, but getting things to where you really want them to be takes time, which is why Ben now lines up his wines and says, "This is the first time I've been able to pull out all the current wines and think, Yes, this is where I want all the wines to be."

"And what -" I start to ask, having starting in on the mightily impressive 2004 Amon Ra - "what then was the 2003 Amon Ra like?" "I like it,” Ben says, "but in a way I like it because I know what the vineyard looked like when I walked into it in 2003 and saw how decimated it looked by the heat of the season....until I saw came to this one small patch where we get the fruit for the Amon Ra, and it still looked in excellent condition - so in a way I like it because that wine proves just how great that section of that vineyard is."

It should be born in mind that this turnaround in Glaetzer's fortunes, let alone the standard of the wines, has come at a time when the industry is supposed to be going through one of the hardest times in its history. Everywhere you look there are people telling you how tights things are - but then, when you look hard enough, there are also alot of people saying that the market is really speeding along, and things are good, and selling wine is not a problem. The differentiation between the two views is usually pretty simple: just how good is the quality of the wine you’re putting inside the bottle? "There are huge opportunities right now,” Ben says, “in fact, with every major restructure of the big companies, usually a huge new opportunity opens up for people like us. A lot of our distributors are basically people who haven’t been happy with the treatment they've had from big companies."  One of those opportunities, or at least the path to exploiting them, lies in the soil and climate of Langhorne Creek – long since a favourite hunting ground of Glaetzer wine folk, and clearly a region where they have a lot of long-held, personal ties. This might not be the place to mention it, but it is worth noting that the Glaetzer story in South Australia isn’t exactly a new one: the Glaetzers arrived in South Australia in 1888. In Langhorne Creek and the Limestone Coast Ben, like his father and his uncle, sees enormous potential, and it’s on the back of this that he helped set up another wine business, called Heartland. If making the wines at Barossa Vintners and Glaetzer and Mitolo and Woodstock wasn’t enough for a young man, then listen to this – no wonder Ben’s hardly at home.  Heartland is anything but off-the-cuff – it actually sings to a serious orchestration. It has a range of owners, including Grant Tilbrook, Scott Collet, Geoff Hardy, Gino Melini, John Pargeter, Vicki Arnold and Ben himself, and owns a serious 1000 acres of vineyard in Langhorne Creek and the Limestone Coast, a large investment by any standards. With numbers, comes power – and breadth of skills. For now, only 20% of the grapes they grow make it into the Heartland range, with the rest of the grapes sold off to larger concerns. There is growth here, should they need it. And while volume can be a strange thing in the mind of a wine buyer - rarity is often a buyer's ultimate seducer - these are wines that can surely grow in production volume, particularly domestically. For now, 90% of the Heartland production is exported, though interestingly almost none of it makes its way to the United States. Never make a decision on a single box of wine; the Heartland business, like it seems everything in the career of Ben Glaetzer, is built on all this success trailing on for a long time. When you taste the wines, it’s hard to see why it wouldn't do just that. We adjourn for lunch, a quick lunch at the 1918 restaurant in Tanunda in the Barossa - it’s recently changed hands, and the quality has jumped substantially. "It constantly amazes me,” Ben says over olives and salad greens, "how many people in wine actually don’t enjoy it - I mean, if you don’t enjoy it, then just get out and do something else."

Heartland Stickleback White 2005  screwcap: Wines like this need to be delicious, or they’re nothing - there's no real point in being too arty at 12 bucks a pop. This wine does the job in style. It's fresh and punchy, loaded with lime and passionfruit and while the fruit is ripe and generous, it finishes dry and smart.  A semillon, chardonnay, verdelho blend - done well.
Drink: 2005-2006. 84.

Heartland Stickleback Red 2004 screwcap: Fresh, soft and delicious. Lovely meaty, spicy grenache traces to the tug of plummy softness. Awesome complexity and deliciousness at the price. Blend of cabernet, shiraz and grenache. Drink: 2005-2006. 86.

Heartland Langhorne Creek Viognier Pinot Gris 2005  screwcap: Lots of lift and life. Lovely dry length, with a pile of refreshing acid and dry, crisp, mouthwatering style, all nectarine and slate. Lovely blend. Drink: 2005-2006. 87.

Heartland Langhorne Creek Dolcetto Lagrein 2004  screwcap: What an interesting wine. Raw meat, squashed plums, wafts of smoky, charry character and then a swift, delightful, raspberried sweetness. There's spice and bitterness too, in the European tradition, and it does exactly what its maker (Ben Glaetzer) wants it to do: "provide people at this price point with something that’s different an interesting" - it does that
beautifully.  Really good wine. Drink: 2005-2008. 88.

Heartland Langhorne Creek/Limestone Coast Cabernet Sauvignon: Beautiful nose, beautiful palate, excellent drinking. Lots of chocolate and blackcurrant and dust, with hint and, unusually, black pepper. Fifty percent of this wine is unwooded, the rest aged in old oak - this is smart winemaking at play. Fantastically interesting cabernet, full of spice and appeal. Drink: 2005-2017. 90.

Heartland Langhorne Creek/Limestone Coast Shiraz 2004: This is a great value wine. Syrupy, slippery, sweet-fruited - it's a sweet wet smooch of a wine. Coffeed oak sits a fraction above pure, lively, plummy fruit, with a hit of sweet musk and a lovely, even, drinkable weight. Supple, and
excellent. Drink: 2005-2009. 90.

Heartland Directors' Cut Shiraz 2004 To make this wine they reduce the cropping levels that they use for the Heartland shiraz in half (down to 2 tonne/acre), and then ferment it cool before maturing it in a mix of 70% French oak and 30% American. The extra effort pays off. It's meaty and savoury and cedary, with spice and a fluid sense of luscious, ripe, delicious fruit.  It's not heavy, but it's generous, and there's a distinct sense of layered, savoury complexity - that subtle, savoury-meatiness is a winner, especially when matched to such gorgeous, well-mannered ripeness. This is outstanding value. Drink: 2005-2010. 93.

Wine Front Monthly: one of the only independent media voices publishing on wine in Australia. It is truly and thoroughly independent: it carries no advertising; it does not sell wine; and it accepts no consultancies from any winery or wine-related business.  Most of all though, Winefront Monthly is about what's in the glass, and who put it there.