Syrah
Syrah, also known as Shiraz, is a dark-skinned grape variety grown throughout the world and used primarily to produce red wine. In 1999, Syrah was found to be the offspring of two obscure grapes from southeastern France, Dureza and Mondeuse Blanche. Syrah should not be confused with Petite Sirah, a cross of Syrah with Peloursin dating from 1880.
The style and flavor profile of wines made from Syrah are influenced by the climate where the grapes are grown. In moderate climates, they tend to produce medium to full-bodied wines with medium-plus to high levels of tannins and notes of blackberry, mint and black pepper.
In hot climates, Syrah is more consistently full-bodied with softer tannin, jammier fruit and spice notes of licorice, anise and earthy leather.
In many regions the acidity and tannin levels of Syrah allow the wines produced to have favorable aging potential.
Syrah is used as a single varietal or as a blend. Following several years of strong planting, Syrah was estimated in 2004 to be the world's 7th most grown grape at.
It can be found throughout the globe from France to New World wine regions, such as Chile, South Africa, the Hawke's Bay and Waiheke in New Zealand, California and Washington.
It can also be found in several Australian wine regions such as the Barossa Valley, Heathcote, Coonawarra, Hunter Valley, Margaret River, Adelaide Hills, Clare Valley and McLaren Vale.
History
Origin
Syrah has a long documented history in the Rhône region of southeastern France, but it was not known if it had originated in that region.A 1998 study conducted by Carole Meredith's research group in the Department of Viticulture and Enology at University of California, Davis used DNA typing and extensive grape reference material from the viticultural research station in Montpellier, France to conclude that Syrah was the offspring of the grape varieties Dureza and Mondeuse blanche.
File:Rhones Alpes region with Ardeche, Drome, Isere and Savoie highlighted.png|left|thumb|The Rhône-Alpes region. Dureza is believed to have originated in the Ardèche in the southwest and moved east/northeast into Drôme and Isère. Somewhere in this area, most likely in Isère, the vine crossed with Mondeuse blanche, a variety native to the Savoie region, to produce Syrah.
Dureza, a dark-skinned grape variety from the Ardèche region in France, has all but disappeared from the vineyards, and the preservation of such varieties is a speciality of Montpellier. Mondeuse blanche is a white grape variety cultivated in the Savoie region, and is still found in small amounts in that region's vineyards today.
Both varieties are somewhat obscure today, and have never achieved anything near Syrah's fame or popularity, and there is no record of them ever having been cultivated at long distances from their present homes. Thus, both of Syrah's parents come from a limited area in southeastern France, close to northern Rhône. Based on these findings, the researchers have concluded Syrah originated from northern Rhône.
The DNA typing leaves no room for doubt in this matter, and the numerous other hypotheses of the grape's origin which have been forwarded during the years all completely lack support in the form of documentary evidence or ampelographic investigations, be it by methods of classical botany or DNA.
Instead, they seem to have been based primarily or solely on the name or synonyms of the variety. Varying orthography for grape names render dubious any name-based evidence of origins. Nevertheless, origins such as Syracuse or the famous Iranian city of Shiraz had been proposed while the genomic studies had yet to be done.
The parentage information, however, does not reveal how old the grape variety is, i.e., when the pollination of a Mondeuse blanche vine by Dureza took place, leading to the original Syrah seed plant. In the year 77 CE, Pliny the Elder wrote in his Naturalis Historia about the wines of Vienne, where the Allobroges made famous and prized wine from a dark-skinned grape variety that had not existed some 50 years earlier, in Virgil's age.
Pliny called the vines of this wine Allobrogica, and it has been speculated that it could be today's Syrah. However, the description of the wine would also fit, for example, Dureza, and Pliny's observation that vines of Allobrogica were resistant to cold is not entirely consistent with Syrah.
The names Syrah and Shiraz
The grape's many other synonyms are used in various parts of the world, including Antourenein noir, Balsamina, Candive, Entournerein, Hignin noir, Marsanne noir, Schiras, Sirac, Syra, Syrac, Serine, and Sereine.Legends of Syrah's origins often connect it with the city of Shiraz in ancient Iran. The former capital of the Persian Empire under the Achaemenid dynasty produced the well-known Shirazi wine, and legends claim the original grape was later brought to the Rhône. At least two significantly different versions of the myth are reported, giving different accounts of how the grape variety is supposed to have travelled, differing up to 1,800 years in dating the event.
In one version, the Phocaeans could have brought Syrah to their colony around Marseille, then known as Massilia, an ancient Greek colony on the Mediterranean coast, east of the Rhône, which was founded around 600 BCE by the ancient Greeks. The grape would then later have spread to the northern Rhône, which was never colonized by the Phocaeans. No documentary evidence exists to back up this legend, and it also requires the variety to later vanish from the Marseille region without leaving any trace.
The legend connecting Syrah's origins with the city of Shiraz in ancient Iran may, however, be of French origin. James Busby wrote in his Journal of a recent visit to the principal vineyards of Spain and France an excerpt from the 1826 book Œnologie Française; "according to the tradition of the neighbourhood, the plant was originally brought from Shiraz in Persia, by one of the hermits of the mountain" called Gaspare de Stérimberg.
There is a connection between the name Syrah and the Persian word "سیاه". It refers to the origin of this grape, which comes from black grapes and shows connection between the city of Shiraz and this grape. Another legend of the grape variety's origin, based on the name Syrah, is that it was brought from Syracuse by the legions of Roman Emperor Probus sometime after 280 CE. This legend also lacks documentary evidence and is inconsistent with ampelographic findings.
Another proposed etymology links it with the Proto-Celtic word *serra 'billhook', presumably because the billhook was used in pruning.
The name "Shiraz" has been used primarily in Australia in modern times, where it has long been established as the most grown dark-skinned variety. In Australia, it was also commonly called Hermitage up to the late 1980s, but since that name became a French Protected Designation of Origin, this naming practice caused a problem in some export markets and was dropped. The name "Scyras" was used to describe the grape in the earliest Australian documents, and "Shiraz" has been speculated to have come about through the bastardisation of the original word. However, while the names "Shiraz" and "Hermitage" gradually replaced "Scyras" in Australia from the mid-19th century, the spelling "Shiraz" has also been documented in British sources back to at least the 1830s. So while the name or spelling "Shiraz" may be an effect of the English language on a French name, there is no evidence that it actually originated in Australia, although it was definitely the Australian usage and the Australian wines that made the use of this name popular.
Rise to fame
The wines that made Syrah famous were those from Hermitage, the hill above the town Tain-l'Hermitage in northern Rhône, where an hermitage was built on the top, and where De Stérimberg is supposed to have settled as a hermit after his crusades. Hermitage wines have for centuries had a reputation for being powerful and excellent. While Hermitage was quite famous in the 18th and 19th centuries, and attracted interest from foreign oenophiles, such as Bordeaux enthusiast Thomas Jefferson, it lost ground and foreign attention in the first half of the 20th century.In the 18th and the first half of the 19th centuries, most Hermitage wine that left France did so as a blending component in Bordeaux wines. In an era when "clarets" were less powerful than today, and before appellation rules, red wines from warmer regions would be used for improvement of Bordeaux wines. While Spanish and Algerian wines are also known to have been used for this purpose, top Bordeaux châteaux would use Hermitage to improve their wines, especially in weaker vintages.
Arrival in Australia
In 1831, the Scotsman James Busby, often called "the Father of Australian viticulture", made a trip back to Europe to collect cuttings from vines for introduction to Australia. One of the varieties collected by him was Syrah, although Busby used the two spellings "Scyras" and "Ciras". The cuttings were planted in the Royal Botanic Garden, and in Hunter Valley, and in 1839 brought from Sydney to South Australia. By the 1860s, Syrah was established as an important variety in Australia.Modern history
Syrah continues to be the main grape of the northern Rhône and is associated with classic wines such as Hermitage, Cornas and Côte-Rôtie. In the southern Rhône, it is used as a blending grape in such wines as Châteauneuf-du-Pape, Gigondas and Côtes du Rhône, where Grenache usually makes up the bulk of the blend. Although its best incarnations will age for decades, less-extracted styles may be enjoyed young for their lively red and blueberry characters and smooth tannin structure. Syrah has been widely used as a blending grape in the red wines of many countries due to its fleshy fruit mid-palate, balancing the weaknesses of other varieties and resulting in a "complete" wine.From the 1970s and even more from the 1990s, Syrah has enjoyed increased popularity, and plantings of the variety have expanded significantly in both old and new locations. In the early 2000s, it broke into the top 10 of varieties planted worldwide for the first time.