Shiraz Amon Ra, Glaetzer 2022

The 2022 Amon-Ra Shiraz speaks so clearly of the Glaetzer house style: that is to say, sleek, polished, powerful, seamless and fruit-driven. These are wines that speak of the Barossa in their earthy splay of pliable tannin, but they have a vibrance to the fruit that is most attractive. So, while these wines harness the place—this wine could hardly be from anywhere else—they do it in a restrained kind of way. Not that you could call this 2022 Amon-Ra Shiraz "restrained" and get away with it. More to comment on the fact that Barossa is yoked and controlled in this wine. I like it a lot. There are notes of dark chocolate, black cherries, raspberry pastille and even pomegranate molasses, alongside sweet paprika, ironstone and red earth, roasted meat and a throw of tapenade. This is really good. 15% alcohol, sealed under screw cap. Drink: 2024-2037

This shiraz shows balance, texture, drive and vivacity. Dark cherries, blackberries, wild herbs and baking spices on the nose, following through to a full body with fine tannins. Refined texture here, with fleshy berry character mingling with spices and herbs on the focused palate. Well driven and precise with a long, flavorful finish. Drink or hold.

Dense, dark, deep and opaque in the glass. Heady aromas of stewed pum, coffee, sweet oak, dark chocolate, mulberry, iodine and ferrous earth. Dense, dark, powerful and mouth-filling in flavour. There’s lashings of brooding, fleshy dark fruits, along with nutty oak, spice, shapely tannins and a decent lick of acidity. An exercise in power, concentration, boldness and ultimately, balance.

I feel that Ben Glaetzer’s Amon-Ra is one of the flag bearers for contemporary Barossan shiraz, certainly when it comes to the more powerful, weighty styles. It has a sense of compression. Wildly concentrated black fruits and palate heft, yet it displays freshness and form; supple, lithe and possessed of northern subregional power writ large. There’s and imperious tannin structure but the fruit just sucks it all up and charges on. One for the sybaritic indulger of Barossan wine. It’s a ripper.