Syrah = Shiraz = Petite Sirah?

When we featured the Concannon Petite Sirah as our Wine of the Month, enough questions were raised to warrant an article on Syrah, Shiraz, and Petite Sirah. Are they equivalent? Are they even related?

One thing is clear. Syrah and Shiraz are equivalent. “There’s no difference at all,” responds Australian-born winemaker Daryl Groom of Geyser Peak Winery in Sonoma County. “Shiraz is a different name for the same grape variety as Syrah.”

Legend has it that Syrah was originally grown in Shiraz, an ancient city of Persia, now Iran. Ultimately the grape found its way to France’s Rhône Valley where locals put a French twist on its pronunciation. But there is no proof of an Iranian connection. In Australia, where Syrah is called Shiraz, winemakers maintain that they are simply using it’s original name. Shiraz has been grown in Australia since the mid-1800s and is the most widely planted red wine grape there today. Despite an identical botanical nature, French Syrah and Australian Shiraz typically reflect different styles of winemaking. “They’re at opposite ends of the spectrum,” observes Groom, who gave up his enviable position making Penfolds Grange, Australia’s most famous Shiraz, when he moved to California in 1989. He bucks the trend and calls his California wine Shiraz.

Australian Shiraz is traditionally grown in Clare Valley, Barossa Valley, and McLaren Vale, regions that are hotter and drier than France’s Rhône Valley. “There is a richness that comes from the Australian climate,” Groom says. “It’s a more up-front, jammy style.” When combined with aggressive American oak, Australian Shirazs’ forward, fruit-driven style can work quite well. The best French Syrahs, such as E. Guigal’s Côte-Rôtie La Mouline and Paul Jaboulet Aîné’s Hermitage La Chapelle, certainly show no lack of richness or ripeness, but they often display more earthiness, along with a leaner and pe rhaps denser structure.

Australian winemakers often press Shiraz juice off the skins early before fermentation is complete. The wine then goes dry (finishes fermenting) in American oak barrels. This process can deliver a soft, smoky edge. French winemakers (and most American ones) generally favor longer skin contact which can accent tannins.

“I didn’t know Syrah wasn’t supposed to taste like Australian Shiraz,” says Bonny Doon’s Randall Grahm, a California Rhône-varietal pioneer in the early 1980s. “People still don’t know it’s not a warm-climate grape,” he adds caustically. Grahm’s French bias is well-known, but he underscores the different approaches to making grand wines from the same grape.

Groom believes that California Shiraz has the potential to be as good as the best from his homeland. “As we figure out what works best, the wines will improve. In Australia, they have more mature vines. That will take some time here,” he notes. California wines labeled Shiraz (Simi, Wattle Creek, Voss, and Seven Peaks, and Geyser Peak) are made by Australian- or New Zealand-born winemakers. But it would be simplistic to say California Shiraz mirrors Australian Shiraz; there are too many climatic and winemaking variables that come into play.

While Syrah and Shiraz may be interchangeable, Petite Sirah in California was long thought unrelated to Syrah. A generation of wine educators and retailers dutifully explained to consumers that Petite Sirah was a misnomer. Recent DNA research by Dr. Carole Meredith at the UC-Davis, however, shows they are related after all. Meredith determined that 90 percent of what is called Petite Sirah in California is really Durif, a grape developed in France in the 1880s.

Durif was created from a seed parent grape called Peloursin, but the identity of the pollinating grape was unclear until DNA-typing positively identified it as Syrah. “Peloursin is definitely a parent of Petite Sirah, as is Syrah,” Meredith says. Though it never caught on in France, Durif was widely planted in California early in this century and referred to by most growers as Petite Sirah. Known for its dark hue and firm tannins, it has often been used as a blending wine to give color and structure. On its own, Petite Sirah also can make a hearty, age-worthy wine, but few experts consider it as complex as Syrah itself.

So the short answer is: Syrah = Shiraz, and both are related to, but not identical to, Petite Sirah.  

E-Mail: beekman@conversent.net

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