From a new Vintage that really packs a punch - John is crafting perfection at ridiculous prices.
After a blockbuster run of vintages, I'm mighty glad to have it back - but this won't stick around for too long! With consistently high praise from anyone who’s cracked a bottle it’s won fans from right across the board for its depth of flavour, aroma, and precise but complex structure.
The nose is powerfully fruity with a nice chocolaty backbone, traces of dried mint and spice also present with a thread of vanillin oak. The body sits somewhere between medium and full, with a well-assembled fruit profile underpinned by oak and super fine tannins, assuring a good development with age (if you can bring yourself to wait).
With so much brilliant vino for under 30 bucks, Australia truly is the lucky country, and the Johns Blend Margarete's Shiraz is known by the wine intelligentsia & a few others coming slowly to the sent of something special but is certainly understood as one of my favourites.
Awards and Accolades
95 Points - James Halliday, Australian Wine Companion "From four vineyards, vinified separately, fermented and matured for 26 months in new French hogsheads. Practice makes perfect, and John Glaetzer has practised unrelentingly for 42 years. The vinification, oak usage and the reliable climate of Langhorne Creek mean that you know what you will get without taking the cork out of the bottle."
2012 Vintage: 96 Points - Campbell Mattinson, Australian Wine Companion The concentration of black berried fruit here is phenomenal. It's graded with grainy, coffeed, earthen tannin too. There's oak but it's integrated; the wine is saturated with flavour but it remains keen and fresh. A long future awaits, cork permitting.
About the Winery
A constant pursuit of excellence in every aspect of production is the key to the success of John and Margarete Glaetzer's family business, which produces John's Blend. John and Margarete have seen their vision come to fruition when the 1974 John's Blend was first released in 1977. This classic Australian red wine continues the award winning success story of John Glaetzer, over many years of wine making for some of Australia's top wine producers.
Over 30 years experience of fine wine making has established John Glaetzer to hand craft these uniques reds. Small batches of Cabernet Sauvignon grapes from the alluvial soils of Langhorne Creek and Shiraz from Langhorne Creek and McLaren Vale are crushed, fermented, pressed and blended into oak hogsheads for maturation. These small batches of grapes become John's Blend, a select, super premium label with limited production.
Colour - Very deep rich and intense red Nose - Very powerful intense chocolate and eucalypt mint with complex French oak lift. Pallet - A rich full bodied red showing classic Langhorne Creek character of chocolate/mint / plum. While full bodied, the palate is balanced with French oak backing with a soft tannin finish.
Don't Pay: $38.00
WBW Rating: 96/100
Closure: Cork
Region: Langhorne Creek, SA
Winemaker: John Glaetzer
Drink now until: 2030
Alc/Vol: 14.5 %
