Taste: Hip-hip syrah

Hip-hip syrah

Uncorked, a new monthly column, cuts through the confusion and the snobbery about wine to help you find the best bets in a bottle. The column will run the last Wednesday of the month.

By CHRIS SHERMAN

Before he gets on the stump to preach about why syrah is the Next Big Red, Jim Fiolek of Zaca Mesa in Santa Barbara, Calif., concedes that he has made similar claims before.

"Fifteen years ago when I was at Sanford Winery (in Buellton, Calif.), we were making pinot noir and I knew we were going to be it. We were going to be it."

Didn't quite happen. Sanford does make exceptional pinot noir, but the Burgundian grape is unlikely to replace cabernet sauvignon and merlot as our favorite red wines.

Today Fiolek is just a few miles away at Zaca Mesa, has a salt-and-pepper ponytail and is betting on a different upstart. He and winemakers up and down California think the syrah grape of France's Rhone Valley has a much better chance at giving cabernet a poke in the ribs.

We've already had juicy syrahs from the French and the Australians (who call the same wine "shiraz") that turned out to be fun with pasta or pizza, even Cajun food, and seriously good with a leg of lamb or anything from the barbie.

With syrah, California growers can make a distinctive, consistent wine that wine drinkers will like better than unpredictable cabs, which range from powder-dry to insipid. Think of syrah as a merlot with character.

Plant syrah grapes in the coldest parts of California or the warmest, sell the wine for $3.99 or $30, Fiolek explained during a trip to Sarasota, and it will still have the core features of syrah.

The wine is dark red, almost inky in color; the flavor is of fruit jam -- plums, black cherries and berries -- with an earthy hint of peppery spice and a lush, easygoing texture that won't dry out your tongue. Give it a few years and it is even richer; indeed, some of the best Rhones you can give 25 years or more.

The best part, Fiolek says, adopting his Sally Field voice: "You like it. You really, really like it."

Syrah is a wine that goes well with jokes, which is why Randall Grahm, the clown prince of American wine, grows syrah at Bonny Doon Vineyards in California. He also imports one from France he labels Syrah Sirrah, which he describes "as content with oneself as a, let us say, generously pillowed, older Frenchman in the briefest of swimwear: "Take me and my soft tannins just as we are.' "

They deserve a good laugh with their success. Syrah comes from an extended and well-traveled family with roots that may extend to the ancient Persian city of Shiraz, or maybe Syracuse in Sicily.

For centuries, however, syrah's place in the sun was in the northern part of the Rhone Valley, especially in Hermitage on the steep hillsides next to the river, where it made a wine as famous and expensive as a top drawer Bordeaux.

Yet it was also tossed into blends with grenache, mourvedre and even white grapes in Chateauneuf-du-Pape and livelier wines farther south and in Provence.

When 19th century blokes tried to replicate French wines in overheated Australia, they had the most success with a grape that was syrah but they knew as shiraz. It became their main red, in jug wines and prize winners, most notably Penfolds' Grange Hermitage.

Next stop was the Australian invasion of the United States in the mid '80s. Then, as now, American wineries were more interested in fashionable cabernet sauvignon and chardonnay than grapes they considered rustic. The Australians also wanted to sell cab and chard by the boatload, but they refused to leave their shiraz behind and brought it along in blends with cabernet and standing on its own.

The timing was perfect, for it encouraged an underground movement among some American winemakers and wine drinkers to declare boredom with wines that aped Bordeaux and Burgundy. These "Rhone rangers" and other independent thinkers knew that there was another, more robust and spicy tradition in California. There was hardly any syrah (Zaca Mesa planted some in the late '70s), but plenty of vineyards were planted to hearty zinfandel and grenache and some to gutsy little petite sirah, an inaccurately named grape distantly related at best. Americans had grown and liked these spunky reds since the 1800s.

As 20th century winemakers ventured into odd, often hotter climates, many found their new vineyards produced mediocre cabernet and ordinary chardonnay but were perfect for Rhone grapes, especially syrah.

In fact, the Rhone revival has produced exceptional syrahs in the cabernet country of Napa, at Joseph Phelps, Truchard and Swanson, but the greatest boom has been outside California's most famous wine valley. Syrah grapes are grown heavily in northern Sonoma, Mendocino and Lake counties, all down the central and southern sections of the coast and inland as far as Idaho.

In the past decade, syrah acreage has been growing at the fastest rate, from less than 200 in 1989 to more than 10,000 last year, and is now closing in on pinot noir's 15,000 acres. Far more land grows cabernet or, increasingly, merlot grapes.

But that's more of the same thing.

Those of us who want something different find it's more fun to root for syrah -- and Sally Field.

Shelf knowledge

You can get a good taste of syrah for less than $10 or spend $25 and up on some of the best, once you sort out the name game.

Syrah (France): In France, most labels note the place where the grapes grew, not the kind of grape. Wines from Hermitage, Cote Rotie, St.-Joseph, Crozes-Hermitage and Cornas in the northern Rhone Valley are made from syrah grapes. Syrah is also mixed in many other Rhone reds; some vineyards in the south of France now make inexpensive all-syrah wines for export.

Top producers: Jaboulet, Guigal, Chapoutier, Chave.

Syrah (United States): Americans put syrah on the label when it makes up 75 percent of the grapes used; you'll find smaller amounts in Rhone-style blends. Syrah grapes do grow in Napa Valley, Calif., but most come from other areas: from Dry Creek and Russian River in Sonoma, north to Mendocino and farther south in Livermore, Monterey, Santa Barbara and Paso Robles. They are also succeeding in Idaho, Virginia and Washington.

Top producers: Zaca Mesa, Bonny Doon, Geyser Peak, Eberle, Truchard, Swanson and Joseph Phelps, Seven Peaks.

Shiraz (Australia): That's the Australian word (sometimes rhymed with jazz). It's often blended with cabernet sauvignon or grenache but stands largely alone in the great wines. Look for shiraz from the McLaren Vale and the Barossa and Clare valleys in south Australia.

Producers: Penfolds, Rosemount Estates, Leasingham, Barossa Valley Estates, Wolf Blass

Petite sirah (United States): Botanically it's not the same grape at all. It has grown in California for decades, and so has the understandable confusion. Like syrah, petite sirah is dark, full-bodied, smooth, spicy and underappreciated. Napa makes good stuff, but petite sirah is grown more often in less expensive vineyards north and south and in South America.

Producers: Guenoc, Bogle, Ironstone, Foppiano, David Bruce and Parducci.