Gourmet Traveller WINE Wine Australia Medal winner 2011: Nick Glaetzer, Frogmore Creek/Glaetzer Dixon
Hailing from a family deep-set in the world of wine, this young winemaker is making fresh tracks of his own, creating ethereal and approachable Tasmanian wines, and he isn’t afraid to experiment.
So what’s a nice, warm-blooded Barossa boy like Nick Glaetzer doing in the icy chill of Tasmania? The Barossa is central to the winemaking life of Glaetzer’s family: father, Colin was chief winemaker at Barossa Valley Estate before starting the contracting winemaking business Barossa Vintners and his family company with second son, Ben. Oldest son, Sam, is a senior winemaker with Treasury Wine Estates based in the Barossa. Ben, a former winner of this award is also based in the Barossa, and makes wine with his family company, Mitolo and Heartland. There’s little doubt that the blood of the Barossa throbbed in the veins of John Glaetzer, Colin’s twin, during his 25-year career as chief winemaker for Wolf Blass. It was his uncle who was most scathing of Nick’s decision to to make Tassie pinot (“it’s like light beer”).
It was the combination of Nick’s now wife, Sally Dixon, being posted to Tasmania as a reporter with the ABC in 2005 and a fascination with pinot noir, which were responsible for his urge to make wine there. Ironically, the interest in pinot came from his father, Colin, who had worked in Burgundy, understood its wines and shared them with the family. His comment that pinot noir was the hardest grape to transform into good wine intrigued the young Nick.
The most formative influence on his eventual career path was, understandably, growing up in a winemaking family with its associated memories: the excitement of vint-age with its distinctive sounds and smells, strolling through near-ripe vineyards tasting the grapes, drinking ripe, sweet grape juice during fermentation. Like so many of his contemporaries, he, studied in another field, comp-leting a mechatronic engineering degree at the University of Adel-aide, before settling down to a science degree in winemaking and viticulture at Curtin University. The tug of winemaking continued to call to him while he was studying for his first degree. During this time he worked harvest each year at Barossa Vintners and completed vintage in the Minervois and the Pfalz in 2001. The combination of modern and traditional winemaking practices in Pfalz was a significant influence on his riesling making.
He gained important commercial experience working vintage in the Murray Darling (2005), Riverland (2006) and the Hunter (2007) in between working with Alain Rousseau and Andrew Hood at Frogmore Creek (vintage 2006) and marrying Sally (August 2006), followed by three months in Europe and vintage in Burgundy. His appointment to a full-time winemaking position at Frogmore Creek in 2007 led to a more settled lifestyle, albeit with the winery in expansion mode – moving from 28 to 84 hectares of vineyard and 3000 to 28,000 cases of wine in four years.
He enthuses about life at Frogmore with the estate vineyard “consistently providing the best riesling in Tassie”; the opportunity to experiment alongside Rousseau: fermenting riesling, gewürztraminer and chardonnay on skins; co-fermenting two to three per cent of whites such as chardonnay, pinot blanc, pinot gris and gewürztraminer with pinot noir. With 35 different labels in the portfolio since the purchase of Meadowbank, there’s little time to get bored.
Which brings us to his 1000-case family label, Glaetzer-Dixon, that produces pinot noir, riesling and shiraz. With help from Rousseau, who has known the Tasmanian landscape since 1991, Glaetzer has sourced fruit from a dozen vineyards in the Coal Valley and the Derwent. Experimentation is rife. With riesling, he is moving away from florals, looking for complex secondary characters. He’s using slower-working yeasts and controlling fermentation at 16-18°C until the acid is balanced by the sugar. The 2010 Glaetzer-Dixon Überblanc Riesling is subtle, delicate and textural, balancing fresh appley characters and slaty notes, finishing fresh, dry and zingy. There are two pinot noirs: Avancé, a seductively delicious, fresh and bright style from younger, higher-yielding grapes, given no new oak; and the aspirational Rêvur, an ageworthy, more complex and deeply concen-trated wine that in 2008 is fleshy, even velvety with violet and brambles, fine and balanced. The secret to Mon Père Shiraz is that it is sourced from three vineyards, two of them planted in 1972 and 1973 – and they have no problem with ripening. This is cool-climate shiraz, co-fermented with a touch of pinot gris, he says, made more in the style of pinot noir than shiraz. In 2009, it has restraint, redcurrant and black cherry flavours with some white pepper notes, fleshy texture, and balanced fine-grain tannins. Approachable and food-friendly.
Nick Glaetzer continues to pack far too much into his busy life. Experimentation and the desire to challenge orthodoxies remains at the core of his winemaking, whether it be at Frogmore Creek or Glaetzer-Dixon. In the quality of the wines for which he’s been responsible, he’s shown all the attributes which make him a worthy Wine Australia Medallist.
TEXT PETER FORRESTAL PHOTOGRAPHY FROGMORE CREEK/GLAETZER DIXON
This article is from the October/November 2011 issue of Gourmet Traveller WINE.