97 POINTS
Sam Kim - Wine Orbit
A magnificent offering, the wine presents black and blueberry notes, toasted spice, vanillin oak, and rich floral aromas on the nose. The concentrated palate is opulent yet refined with impressive persistence. Wonderfully complemented by plush texture and seamlessly woven tannins, making it superbly structured and gratifying.
97 POINTS
Ray Jordan - Winepilot
A wine that speaks with passion about its Barossa heritage. Generously full-flavoured with masses of concentrated dark fruit delivered with layered richness. The small crop from a reasonably challenging vintage produced fruit with the concentration and balance to create a wine like this. It’s opulent, yes, but there is an effortless stylishness that elevates it into another zone. Licorice and blackberry notes with plush dark plum and a lift of spice all play their roles. Fine chalky tannins and plenty of balanced oak add the final touch to a very good wine with staying power.
96 POINTS
Ken Gargett - Winepilot
This is truly an iconic wine and a Barossa classic. Again, from the highly regarded Ebenezer sub-region, with the vines between fifty and 130 years of age. The yield is just a derisory two tonnes per hectare. Maturation was for sixteen months in new hogsheads, 95% French and the remainder American. Under cork. The colour here is black as a politician’s heart. There are cigar box notes, chocolate, blackberries, tobacco leaves, mocha, licorice, coffee beans and cold tea. This is supple, seamless and silky, with immaculately integrated oak, focus, serious length, impeccable balance and ideal structure. This is simply stunning and will continue to thrill for the next fifteen to twenty years. There are plenty of more expensive flagship wines from this region that don’t hold a candle to this cracker.
96 POINTS
Erin Larkin - Robert Parker Wine Advocate
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.
96 POINTS
Dave Brookes - Halliday Wine Companion
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 an 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.
93 POINTS
Gary Walsh - The Wine Front
The mighty Amon-Ra unfiltered Barossa Shiraz. Cork sealed. Heavy bottle. Anachronistic Amon Ra. Here’s a throaty and full-throttle expression of Barossa Shiraz. Blackberry, dark chocolate, mint nougat, toffee, dark spice and ground coffee, some thyme and dried herb perfume. It’s full-bodied, a dark and grainy grip to tannin, quite some heft in the mouth, toasted hazelnut, with a ground coffee bitterness carrying on a finish of good length. It’s a wine of some presence and intensity, not my thing, but some will love. Perhaps a bit warm and salty to close. It’s a steak house special kind of wine, and good and appropriate in that way.
