A Master Somm's Guide to Syrah

Today we are talking all about Syrah. For those of you that know me, I'm a huge Syrah fan. Any of my friends will tell you it's the thing that I like to drink the most. So this is a topic that I'm really excited to chat about. Syrah, when I was kind of studying for my sommelier exams, was one of the first great varieties that I could really taste blind pretty well. It was a couple of northern Rome wines, I think, that I got like some friends handed to me. And I remember the first time that I nailed it, I was so happy. And I think I just fell in love with Syrah and loved it for that reason. Because when I picked it up and smelled it in the glass, I just knew exactly what it was. So that kind of kicked my relationship off with Syrah. But the other reason I really love it is, you know, I tend to like, when it comes to red wines in particular, I like wines that have a lot of aroma. I appreciate more aroma than I do kind of the flavor or the texture of wine sometimes. And Syrah is a very aromatic grape variety. But it's a little different than like the other aromatic red grapes you might think about like Pinot Noir, Grenache, or Nebbiolo, in the sense that it's also quite savory. It's got a little bit of a darker, kind of more meaty, muscular kind of profile to it. I like Syrah because it makes me want to eat. It smells like black pepper, it smells like roasted meat, and bacon fat, and smoke, and violets, black olives, and salty, and briny. And you know, I smell it, my mouth starts to water a little bit, like I need a cheeseburger, I need a piece of steak, or I need something to go with this. Syrah is grown in many places around the world, most notably in the northern Rhone Valley, where it's home. The grape variety itself, there's kind of a few arguments out there about where it came from originally. Some people think that it comes from the area of Shiraz, which is in modern-day Iran. Some people think that maybe it was brought over into the Rhone Valley at some point in time by the Greeks. But really, from what we can tell from DNA testing, and from looking back at historical data, Syrah is home in the Rhone Valley. The parent grapes of Syrah are Deresa and Mondeuse Blanche, two grapes that were really only local to this particular area of France. Those two grape varieties never really made it outside of this area, so the fact that those are the two grapes that are parents of Syrah really helps to kind of solidify the fact that Syrah really kind of was birthed here in the northern Rhone Valley. But certainly since then, Syrah has made its way around the globe. It is really famous now in Australia, where they call it Shiraz, which we're about to taste. Certainly in California, South America, even Italy, Chile, a number of places around the world where it makes a lot of different styles. The other interesting thing about Syrah is, like other really great red grape varieties, maybe like Pinot Noir, it definitely takes on its sense of place really well. You know, you can smell what Syrah is like from Australia versus the United States versus France. It really kind of communicates that really well, and I love that about the variety. And also, Syrah is a grape that, you know, I mentioned that it goes well with food, but I think a lot of people think that Syrah is like a really big, powerful style of wine, but it's really not. Great Syrah has a lot of acidity. It's usually fairly moderate in alcohol, and the aromas on it, like I said, kind of jump out of the glass. So for me, Syrah is not like a heavy, powerful, muscular style of wine. Syrah is an elegant wine that's kind of camouflaged in like a slightly darker colored, slightly richer style of wine. Syrah as a grape variety, depending on the clone, can be, you know, fairly large or smaller bunches. The grape itself, it's quite thick-skinned, and again, depending on the clone, can be a little bit larger, a little bit smaller berried. What's interesting about Syrah is that there's a ton of color pigmentation in the grape skins. That's why it can actually extract quite a bit of color from it. You know, a common thing that would happen in Cote Rotie or in the Northern Rhone, for example, is that white wines are often blended in to Syrah, and they did that for a couple of reasons. One is in an area which is, you know, fairly cool climate, especially if you think back 20, 30, 50 years, sometimes Syrah had trouble ripening, so white grapes of that area, be it Viennier or Marsan Roussan, were able to ripen a lot easier. They have higher sugar levels, so you could add those grapes to the blend, and it would help raise the alcohol levels of this wine that would otherwise struggle to kind of get to a certain level of ripeness. The other reason, though, more scientifically, is because Syrah as a grape has so much color pigmentation to it, there's not enough juice in the grape itself to actually extract all that color out, so you need more juice. So when you crush Syrah up into a tank, adding actual white wine juice to it, white grape juice to it, will help pull out more color. So it actually either stabilizes color or makes the wine darker when you add that white wine juice to it, which I think has always been really interesting. That's why you see, you know, in Cote Rotie and Hermitage and Croze Hermitage and places like that, traditionally speaking, you can blend in some white grapes to it. Now, other places in the world will do that as well, but I think they do it more as an ode to the Northern Rhone tradition than they do for practical reasons or for the need to do it. We're going to dive into the tasting here, and, you know, I could have done this a few different ways as far as the order is concerned. So we've got an Aussie wine here, we've got a wine from California, and we've got a wine from the Northern Rhone, of course. And, you know, typically I would say you probably want to go with that Aussie wine last, mostly because Aussie Shiraz is usually pretty big and powerful and really alcoholic and very fruity, so you don't want it to overpower, you know, the other wines. But in this case, this wine in particular is only 13.5% alcohol for, you know, Shiraz from Australia. That's pretty darn low, to be honest. And also, I really wanted to finish with Cote Rotie just for my own personal reason, so I can drink more of that. So that's why we're doing it in this order. So what we're starting with here is the Yangara, the Kingswood Shiraz, 2017 from McLaren Vale in Australia. So McLaren Vale as a region is in South Australia. It's typically a kind of a warmer place. You do see a lot of Shiraz being grown here. You see a fair amount of Bordeaux varieties being grown here as well. You know, for me to see a McLaren Vale wine at 13.5% alcohol, frankly, is a little surprising. I would usually see a little bit more alcohol out of here. We're still in a fairly warm place. Really excited to try it. It's my first time tasting this wine. I've never had this producer before, so let's give it a shot. So first things first, you know, when you look at the color of Syrah or Shiraz, it's always going to be pretty dark in color. You know, and this one in particular, you know, it's actually not super, super dark. I can still see my hand behind it. Sometimes you can certainly have a Syrah wine that's going to be fully opaque. You know, you won't be able to see anything behind it at all. This one is a little bit on the lighter side, which is not, you know, atypical either. A lot of wines that you see from the Northern Rhone are lighter, but it definitely does always take on a little bit more of a purplish hue to it versus like red. You know, if you look at Bordeaux wines, you know, that's typically a red profile. Sangiovese is a very red profile. Syrah is a little bit more leaning on the purplish side of things. So when I smell it, you know, surprisingly, again, this is not a typical McLaren Vale style of Syrah or Shiraz. This is what I think of as a little bit more of an old school or old world style of making this wine. So it's got a lot more pepper, a lot more of that spice, and kind of meaty, bacon-y flavors to it. A hint of that violet and kind of rose petal. Something kind of muting it a little bit too, though. It's like it needs a little bit of air, like we maybe should have decanted this wine a little bit. It seems like it's kind of hiding. It's a little shy at the moment. Syrah actually does enjoy a little bit of oxygen during its aging process, a little bit more than, say, Pinot Noir or certain other great varieties. You know, I do like to decant most Syrah wines almost all the time, whether they're younger or older. They do benefit from a nice healthy dose of air. All right, so I'm definitely getting that Aussie kind of profile on the palate here, though. You know, despite we have that more peppery, spicy, old world kind of aroma to it, the flavor on the palate here is much more New World. It's got a really nice, vibrant, very fruit-forward profile or flavor. A lot of blackberry, black currants, black plum. Certainly still getting some of that spice and some of the bacon fat and things like that, but it's much, much more on the background. This wine has a lot more fruit, almost like a syrupy profile to it. Definitely not sweet, but you get a little bit more of this kind of compote, you know, dehydrated or more, you know, concentrated fruit flavors on the palate versus kind of the spice that I was getting on the nose, but still quite tasty. Nice acidity. The alcohol is really in check and, you know, this for me is, I don't know if I would call this a typical McLaren Vale wine, but I definitely get the, that more fruity aspects of what I normally expect to get from a Syrah wine from Australia. So quite tasty and I think a good example of what Aussie wine tastes like on the palate. So this next wine, really excited about, I love Syrah from California. I think California is a really great place to grow and make Syrah. Particularly, I like Syrah to come from quite cool climate places in California. This one's coming from from Santa Barbara. This is Holus Bolus, a 2017 Syrah from the Presqu'il Vineyard in Santa Maria Valley, being one of the coolest places in California to grow grapes. Really, it's because of the mountain range here and the way that the landscape is kind of oriented. So Santa Maria is an appellation that's a little bit further north, basically kind of almost a straight shot north from Santa Rita Hills. So as far as proximity to the ocean, it's still fairly close, but it doesn't get as much of that direct cool air coming in. So you're gonna have a mix here of really nice Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, as well as Syrah, and I think these guys do a really amazing job growing Syrah here. So let's pour this. Presqu'il is a winery that I love very much. They do a great job, and then they also sell a little bit of their fruit. So this is coming from their Presqu'il Estate Vineyard. They have a small amount of Syrah on the property. What I like about Holus Bolus is they make their wines in certainly a little bit of a more old school, traditional method, meaning a fair amount of whole cluster fermentation. No usage of new oak. These are all old barrels here. Yeah, and right out of the gates, I mean, this is just like screams like pepper and smoke and mead, and again, makes me want to take a big bite of a ribeye or something. The pepper is really intense on this, you know, so Syrah is a great variety. Also has a compound in it called Rotonde. Rotonde is actually the same compound that you would find in black pepper oil. So if you take like black pepper corns, the oil that's in that contains Rotonde, which is the same compound that you actually find in Syrah as well. So when you say you smell black pepper, you're actually really kind of smelling black pepper. This has a ton of that. It's really spicy. Nice, really good. This is, compared to the Aussie wine, not quite as fruity, doesn't have quite as much of that like compote syrupy, like intense fruit profile to it. It's a little bit more firm. It's a little bit more structured. It has the tannins are a little firmer on this wine. Still really nice acidity, nice texture. But, you know, I think a little bit more of that savory aspect. So of the three wines, I'm guessing this is probably going to, the Cote Roti is going to be the most savory, but this is a really nice middle ground. So this last wine with this really cool label on it is Jean-Michel Stéphane. This is his Coteau de Tupin 2016 Cote Roti. So as I open this, we got to talk about the Rhone a little bit more as a region. So the Rhone is in France. It is kind of in the southern, southeastern part of France. Basically, if you're in Provence and you head due north, you'd end up in the southern Rhone first. And you keep going north, you'd end up in the northern Rhone. So the Rhone Valley in general is split into two major regions. You have the northern Rhone and the southern Rhone. They couldn't really be more different. The northern Rhone is an area that's characterized by steep hillsides, lots of granite hills, a very narrow valley that kind of runs the length of the Rhone River. Whereas the southern Rhone is this kind of wildly expansive, more alluvial plain where it's wide open. It's just soft rolling hills and it's much warmer. Where the northern Rhone, you're still much more continental. You can feel the difference between day and night. It doesn't get super, super hot during the daytime. Whereas in the southern Rhone, it's pretty warm all the time. You can start to feel that kind of Mediterranean air. The other big difference is the grape varieties that are used. So in the northern Rhone, when you're talking red wines, you're talking about Syrah. Yes, they can blend in some other white grapes to it. But if it's a red wine grown in the northern Rhone, you're talking Syrah. There's a little bit of Gamay there. There's a little bit of some other things there. But all of your major appellations are based on Syrah as the red grape. Whereas in the southern Rhone, you know, think of your most famous southern Rhone appellation, which probably stretched enough to pop. You're talking blends. Mostly based on Grenache. So you'll have some Syrah grown down there, but it's less of a key player. It's more of a blending grape. Grenache is the star. Syrah is blended in. Morvette is blended in. There's a bunch of other things that are blended in. Whereas in the northern Rhone, Syrah is the king. Syrah is the main focus. So northern Rhone is split into a number of different appellations. Most famous being Hermitage, Cote-Rotie, Cornas, are your kind of your big three. Those are your A-list celebrities, I guess, when we call it that. And then you've got Saint Joseph and Crozet Hermitage, which are kind of the more value appellations, if you will. But what's interesting about it, to a certain extent similar to Burgundy, is depending on where you are, with which appellation that you're in, these wines give a much different profile. So for me, Cote-Rotie has always been the most Burgundian. And what I mean by that is the wines tend to be silkier, more sensual, softer, very aromatic. More velvet-like texture to the wines. Whereas Hermitage is much more about strength and power and nobility. And then the wines of Cornas, for example, are more kind of farmhouse wines. They're more rustic. They're very tannic. They're intense. They're dirty. They're grimy. They're like, you know, really funky and farmy. That's what's part of their charm, but that's kind of what that's what they're like. It's really good to know that, you know, in the northern Rhone, you can have this wide variety of wines that are based on Syrah that can taste so dramatically different. So this is from Cote-Rotie. And to talk about Cote-Rotie, it's the most northern appellation in the northern Rhone. So it's the first spot that you hit if you're coming south, from like Lyon, for example. In Cote-Rotie, by law, you're allowed to blend up to 20% V&A into the wines. And it does also add like a kind of a softness to the wine and a nice layer of extra aromatics into it as well, which can be really fun. So talking about Jean-Michel Stéphane, I'm going to pour myself a glass of this because I'm ready for it. So this is a guy that doesn't have a ton of history in the Rhone. He just started his winery back in 1991. He actually trained up in Beaujolais. So he comes from a background of natural winemaking and kind of this philosophy of utilizing things like carbonic maceration. So he's a bit of an outlier in the northern Rhone, particularly in Cote-Rotie, which is a fairly traditional area that is doing whole cluster carbonic fermentations, very minimal use of sulfur, if any at all. And he's kind of now, with the natural wine movement, really kind of moving into a little bit more of a spotlight. Whereas, you know, in the late, you know, mid to late 90s, when he was first getting started, he was doing this, you know, he's kind of off the radar a little bit. But this is a winery that I'm keeping an eye on that I think is really interesting and doing great things. So what's fun about these is, you know, when you smell this wine, it's like, just pops out of the glass. It's like, leaps out. There's nothing holding this wine back. It's certainly not reductive at all. It's like really fresh, really vibrant. And it's kind of like, you know, you think about where he came from, his experience in Cote-Rotie, or I'm sorry, in Beaujolais. And there's almost like kind of this Beaujolais-esque kind of flavor profile to it that makes it really approachable and really fun. Still a lot of that like savory, salty, briny kind of thing going on. Less about the pepper in this wine and more about the olive notes, like black olive. If you like briny stuff, you like salty things. It's like a salty red wine. Really makes you want some food. So I hope this got you as excited about Syrah as I am about this grape variety. Like I said, I'm a huge fan of this grape and drink it all the time. And if you haven't tried Syrah before, please do. If you're already into it, I hope maybe these inspired you to try something different, something new. Cheers.