California syrah is in a strange place these days, and it’s no secret in the trade that the wine remains a difficult item to sell. With a few exceptions, this is generally true for both spicy, vibrant syrah from California’s cooler coastal climates, as it is for the jammy, sweeter versions grown in warmer spots.
Yet syrah has its partisans and admirers, people attracted to a wine that at its best is seductive, savage and fraught with tension. And what’s not to love about that?
So what gives? Some people point to an identity crisis in American syrah, which in turn has confused consumers (to say nothing of winemakers). I recently wrote a short overview of syrah (and some of the California Rhône movement) for the San Francisco Chronicle. It’s a light read but features pithy commentary from some of California’s most accomplished producers of Rhône varieties. Here’s a bit with comments from Bob Lindquist (Qupé) and Sashi Moorman (Stolpman and Piedrasassi, among others):
“Too many people jumped on the bandwagon,” says Syrah pioneer Bob Lindquist of Qupé in Santa Maria (Santa Barbara County). The wine industry’s initial enthusiasm for Syrah led to overplanting, whether that meant too much or just simply in the wrong place. But equally, Lindquist says, winemakers tended to ignore what wine lovers were buying. “There was too much coming on without the market being ready for it.”
That the market was unprepared seems almost like an understatement. Drinkers reached for Australian Shiraz but that enthusiasm stopped short of Syrah from these shores.
“As a domestic wine, you can’t really expect consumers to understand Syrah,” says Sashi Moorman of Stolpman Vineyards and Piedrasassi, both located in Santa Barbara County. “It will never be Chardonnay or Cabernet.”
Practically everyone I know who loves Syrah loves it for its wildness – the scent of wood smoke and violets, the hint of wild herbs and white pepper, the light-bending core of dark fruit, the weirdly thrilling flavors of blood and meat and olive and earth. Whatever the descriptor, there’s a sauvage quality to good Syrah that quickens the pulse of even the most genteel wine drinker.
But as Syrah enters its 35th modern harvest in California (Joseph Phelps produced the first, in 1974), the variety seems to have gotten tame with the years; the wines are sweeter, fatter, more buxom, more monochromatic; much of the wildness that drew us to the category has been baked, ripened or oaked out of them. They’ve become, as one winemaker put it, “amenable, but dull.” Damning words for any wine, of course, but for Syrah, unthinkable. Why, not long ago those words might have been used to describe – gasp! – merlot.
To read Patrick’s articles at Zester from the beginning, go here for first edition and here for the second part.
To end, some classic Sly & the Family Stone:
