WSET Lesson 2 Part 1 Syrah

A black grape that is small and thick skinned, so juice extracted from Syrah* grapes and skins has a good helping of tannins (we know already how vital these are to red wine). The vines are late budding, so they don't fall foul of climatic troubles early in the growing season. They are fairly disease resistant, except for Chlorosis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorosis  that can affect the rootstock. Syrah needs warmth to ripen, in a warm area this will happen by the middle of the harvest season, again avoiding the troubles the climate can wreak on later ripening grapes.

image courtesy of user Bethling at wikipedia (CC-BY-2.0)

 

 

The red wines produced from Syrah are always full-bodied, always tannic and exhibit characteristics of dark fruits, black pepper and spice aromas. The exclusively Syrah classic Northern Rhône wines of Côte Rôtie and Hermitage are big boys whose tannins take years to soften. In Australia it is called Shiraz and is typically grown in warmer conditions, so the resulting wines have more fruit characteristics, but are no less well built.


Origins
The disparity of the name illustrates the unanswerable question of Syrah’s origins. Although synonymous with the Rhône valley, it was definitely an introduction. The variety has been traced back to Shiraz in Persia, where it still grows. Archeological exploration has shown wine production in the Rhône area for over two millennia, though this is unlikely to have been from Syrah. If the variety had been introduced by the Greeks then it would have borne the name of Shiraz in the first century BC. If the Romans had introduced it two and a half centuries later it would have taken its name from Syracuse where the legions were based. We know it was the Romans who introduced Viognier to the region. By the third century AD Syrah was much in evidence in the Rhône, growing wild having seeded itself beyond the confines of the vineyards.


Territories
As a variety it dominates the Northern Rhône, being the only red grape allowed into the Appellation Contrôlée red wines of the region. Viognier, the perfumed white grape, is the only other addition permitted (only up to 5%), and only as juice for co-fermentation. Blending of red and white wines after fermentation is outlawed across the world. As Shiraz it is dominant in its other great territory, Australia, where it constitutes 17% of red grape production. Sold as a single varietal right across the quality spectrum, it is often successfully blended with Cabernet Sauvignon. Over the past three decades Syrah has increased in popularity across the globe. Particularly heading south down the Rhône, where its strong flavour backbone has made it the major blending variety with the principal variety of the region, Grenache. From there its popularity spreads in all directions around the Mediterranean, particularly as a single varietal Vin de Pays in Languedoc. California has increased its planting of Syrah mostly down to a loose collective named the 'Rhône Rangers' http://www.rhonerangers.org, whose practice of emulating the Old World wine making styles bucks the established trends of the region.


*not to be confused with North American Petit Sirah, although small amounts of this grape are permitted in the blends of Rhône Ranger wines.

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