Syrah

Syrah and Shiraz are the same grape, and as with Pinot Gris the two names have come to signal two styles.

Its origin was long the subject of romantic theories involving Persia and the Crusades. DNA analysis settled it: Syrah is a natural crossing of two obscure French varieties, Dureza from the Ardèche and Mondeuse Blanche from Savoie, making it firmly a child of the northern Rhône where it has always been grown.

In the northern Rhône — Hermitage, Côte-Rôtie, Cornas — it produces a wine of medium to full body with blackberry and black plum, and a distinctive savoury register of black pepper, olive, bacon fat, violet and smoked meat. The pepper note comes from rotundone, a compound found in unusually high concentration in Syrah and in black pepper itself, and it is most pronounced in cooler sites and vintages.

In Australia, as Shiraz, it makes something fuller, riper and sweeter-fruited: blackberry jam, plum, liquorice and chocolate, with softer tannins and higher alcohol. Barossa Valley is the reference, with old dry-grown bush vines dating to the 1840s — among the oldest producing vines anywhere, since phylloxera never reached South Australia.

Cooler Australian regions, particularly the Grampians and Canberra District, make a peppery style much closer to the Rhône.

In Côte-Rôtie it may be co-fermented with a little white Viognier, which stabilises colour and lifts the aroma.

The two styles behave differently in the cellar. Northern Rhône Syrah is built around acidity and savoury complexity and needs a decade to unwind, developing leather, game and dried flowers. Australian Shiraz from a warm site is generous immediately, though the best Barossa wines from old vines age for thirty years and move towards dried fruit, liquorice and earth.

It is a remarkably reliable blending grape. In the southern Rhône and Australia it is the S in GSM, adding colour, structure and pepper to Grenache's softer red fruit. In Côte-Rôtie the reverse happens, with white Viognier co-fermented in to lift the aromatics.

Rotundone, the compound behind the pepper note, is worth knowing about as a practical matter: it is far more pronounced in cool sites and cool vintages, and it declines as the fruit ripens. If you like peppery Syrah, look for cooler regions and for producers who pick earlier.