Hurrah for Syrah By Mark Criden On its way to being the next big red wine, Syrah got knocked Sideways. For years, folks in the booze biz have predicted that this great, prolific, and noble grape would produce the twenty-first century synonym for red wine, replacing the normally insipid Merlot as people’s automatic rouge of choice. But along came Alexander Payne’s 2004 movie, and suddenly Pinot Noir was the new pretender to the throne.Now, I give ground to no one in my admiration for Pinot Noir, whether at the mother ship in Burgundy or in California and Oregon, where it often flourishes. But for a wine to be truly popular, it needs to be easy to cultivate, which Pinot Noir, the Maria Callas of grapes, is not.Syrah, on the other hand, is the poster child for dependability. As long as its growing climate is sufficiently temperate, Syrah produces warm, succulent wines with winning personalities. Winemakers the world over have discovered its charm and versatility, producing lovely examples in Washington State, Spain, Chile, Italy, and South Africa. In many places, notably the southern French districts of Chateauneuf du Pape, Languedoc, and Provence, it often finds its way into companionable blends with Grenache or Mourvedre. In California, Syrah plantings have exploded, going from 344 acres in 1990 to over 14,000 today. And in Australia, where it’s known as Shiraz, it represents forty percent of all red grapes, showing up in everything from two-dollar boxes to wallet-lightening concoctions like Penfold’s Grange, Astralis, and Henschke’s Hill of Grace. Plantings have become wide-spread because winemakers and wine lovers alike discovered that the grape can produce a wide variety of popular styles, depending on how the grapes are grown and the winemaker’s technique. Syrah-based wines can be simple and soft-drink sweet—Australia products like Yellow Tail are the most notorious examples here—or brawny, peppery, earthy, and complex. In both styles, the wines can be crammed with scents and flavors of plums, raspberries, blueberries, and blackberries, and framed with peppery, smoky, sometimes chocolaty accents. (There have been no sightings of white Syrah, but Sparkling Syrah is made in Australia and popular with those tolerant of high gag factors.) Despite its worldwide success, if you’re truly a Syrah crusader, you’ll want to head to its holy land, the Northern Rhone Valley in France. There, you’ll find vertigo-inducing slopes planted with some of the steepest and most difficult-to-work vineyards in the world, and winemakers, mostly long-established, family-owned concerns, who have worked these intimidating hillsides for decades. Concentrated in the appellations of St. Joseph, Côte Rotie, Hermitage, and Crozes-Hermitage, Syrah produces some of the world’s best wines. Not Petite Sirah Syrah is normally an outsized wine, but making it smaller does not make it Petite Sirah.The same folks who have brought you DNA fingerprinting have proved that there’s nothing Syrah about Petite, which is really a distantly related, low-rent grape called Durif. Bred in California, Petite Sirah bears a superficial resemblance to Syrah in its opacity, but its wines tend to be far simpler than true Syrah. While good examples may live for decades, they rarely evolve into anything complex. The finest producers include Turley, La Jota, Carlisle, Thackery, Biale, Marietta, and Ridge; of these, only Marietta’s can be found for less than $20. Asking fancy prices for a petite sirah is like putting a dress on a pig. It might be a pretty dress; it might be a fancy dress. But it’s still a pig. —M.C. We might as well start at the top: high above the village of Tain where the hill of Hermitage gives its name to the greatest wine of the Northern Rhone. According to legend, Syrah was brought there from ancient Persia by a thirteenth-century French knight, Gaspard de Sterimberg, who put down his sword and shield, planted a vineyard atop a beautiful mountain above a sweeping curve of the Rhone, and declared the place his “Hermitage.” In general, these are the “manliest” of French wines, strapping, tannic and vigorous when young, and developing complexity and finesse as they age for twenty years or more. A century ago, the deep, dark wines of Hermitage were frequently used to bolster thinner wines from Bordeaux or Burgundy, a practice that nowadays is wholly illegal. Now with a towering reputation of its own, Hermitage commands a price similar to many of the wines which it was once used to doctor.The greatest producer of Hermitage is the firm of JL Chave (see sidebar). Other fine producers include Marc Sorrel, Faurie, Chapoutier, Delas, and, for the oak lover, Tardieu-Laurent. Jaboulet, long celebrated for its La Chapelle bottling, has been struggling of late. Hermitage’s only shortcoming is its missing sense of humor. If you want Syrah that is equally powerful, but a little lighter on its feet (the middle linebacker of the Northern Rhone, if you will), head for Côte Rotie, the most northern of these appellations. Although usually all-Syrah, Côte Rotie sometimes has a small percentage of the white Viognier grape blended in to add an extra dimension. Those who don’t worship at the church of Hermitage believe Côte Rotie is the finest wine of the Rhone Valley; its wines are aromatic, powerful, graceful, and built for the long haul. From a good vintage many will be at their best fifteen or twenty years old. Any discussion of the best wines of Côte Rotie would have to include Guigal’s preposterously expensive single vineyard cuvées, La Landonne, La Mouline, and La Turque. For those with mortgage payments, stick to wines from Gallet, Clusel-Roch, Ogier, Burgaud, Rostaing, Jamet, and Jasmin, or try Guigal’s frequently excellent but lower-priced offering, the Brun et Blonde. Not only lacking in humor, but often in grace, Cornas is the smash-mouth nose guard of the Northern Rhone. What they lack in finesse, however, these wines more than make up for in impenetrability, intensity, and, rich, deep flavors. Cornas is not for the faint of heart, but if you’re game, great examples of the genre come from Verset, Allemand, Vogt, Juge, and especially Clape.You’re going to spend a fair amount for a great Côte Rotie or Hermitage, certainly over $30, probably over $50, and in some cases over $100 a bottle. (Chave’s luxury Cathelin bottling and the aforementioned Guigal single vineyard Côte Roties are hard to find at $400 a bottle.) Even the top wines of Cornas are near $50. You can, however, enjoy Northern Rhone Syrah without having to kite your car payments. Crozes-Hermitage, made from less formidable slopes around Hermitage, produces wine for relatively early consumption, usually within a decade of the vintage. It is a Syrah with some of the quality of Hermitage, but at a fraction of the price, always under $30 and often under $20. Top wines include Graillot’s La Guiraude bottling and Albert Belle’s Louis Belle cuveé. Chapoutier and Delas also make credible wines here.Even better is St. Joseph, a wine with an often-stronger personality than Crozes but just as price-friendly. A wine like Chave’s Offerus St-Joseph is one of the greatest, most complex red wines available for less than $25. Other top producers include Delas, Paret, Chapoutier, and Gripa. Great recent vintages for the Northern Rhone include 2003 and 1999, though every year since 1994, with the exception of 2002, produced a wide range of fine wines. One final tip: Clape, the fine producer of rough, tough Cornas, makes two easier drinking 100 perecnt Syrah cuveés from vineyards just outside the Cornas appellation. For under $20, his Vin des Amis is easy drinking and straightforward, with just enough edge to make it French. For a few dollars more, his Côtes du Rhone is a spectacular value in French Syrah, easily beating most bottles of St. Joseph and Crozes-Hermitage and besting many Hermitage and Côte Rotie as well. The World’s Greatest Wine Producer? Father and son Gerard and Jean-Louis Chave are the men behind an estate that is widely regarded as one of the world’s greatest, JL Chave in Hermitage. From their winery in the Northern Rhone Valley, where they own some of the finest sites on the hill of Hermitage, they produce both red and white Hermitage wines that are widely accepted as the finest of their kind. Demand for the wines is huge, and critics regularly award high scores to them. About one quarter of Chave’s Hermitage vineyards are planted with the white varieties of Roussanne and Marsanne, and three quarters to Syrah.The vineyards are farmed organically and worked by horse and plough. The red Hermitage is the product of blending seven different plots on the hill of Hermitage, each of which has different soils and subsoils. The Chaves say that each year they are trying to make the ultimate expression of Hermitage, not just great wine. This is a remarkably profound and consistent estate. Even in fairly poor years for the Northern Rhone, the Chaves produce wonderful, long-aging wines from Hermitage and St. Joseph, and have been doing so since the fifteenth century. Around 1,000 cases of white Hermitage and 3,000 cases of red are produced.The white is among the world’s greatest, redolent with honeysuckle, white flowers, peaches, citrus, and minerals. And the red Hermitage is perhaps the greatest red wine produced. Period. All this cred does not lead to inexpensive wine. The Hermitage now sells for well north of $100, and the estate St. Joseph can top $40. But the Offerus St. Joseph, for about $25, is delicious and lovingly made, as are new cuveés of Crozes-Hermitage Blanc and a red Côtes du Rhone called Mon Coeur for under $20. Anything Chave produces is bound to be excellent. —M.C. (Pictures of the Chaves and their estate by Gail Skoff from Kermit Lynch’s Inspiring Thirst: see next page.) Mark Criden, a non-profit executive, is the former chair of the Buffalo Branch of the IWFS. You can reach him at mcriden@yahoo.com. Back to the Table of Contents Back to Top