Sorry for the pun on "Que Sera Sera", but I was amused to learn that the popular Shiraz wines in local stores are actually made from what the French originally called Syrah. Not a different grape or unique varietal at all, just a little bit of creatively applied marketing. Apparently, this has been going on for some time and inspired me to take a closer look...

In a late-'70s moment that has become Napa legend, Robert Mondavi put his sauvignon blanc through oak barrels, changed it to the more easily parsed fume blanc, and created a sensation.

"A wine, by any other name, can sell better", by Jon Bonne

So it seems at first that renaming a wine to give it a more stylish impact is a relatively new phenomenon. But People have been labeling their wines as "Shiraz" now for many years, long before the evil lords of marketing began to focus their attention on vintage for the masses. How did this divergence come about?

It has sometimes been thought that the name of the grape Shiraz was taken directly from that of the city of Shiraz, Iran. More likely is that the name of the grape is a modification of "Scyras," one of a number of synonyms for Syrah in the Rhone Valley, where it was already established in Roman times and from where it was taken to Australia by James Busby in 1832.

-- Wikipedia

So when did Austrailia start calling it Shiraz? Have they ever not? I quick trip to Penfold's website revealed a biography of Max Schubert, "arguably the most important and influential figure in the modern Australian wine industry".

In 1950 Schubert was sent to study sherry-making in Spain. On his way back he visited Bordeaux where he was taken under the wing of Christian Cruse, one of the most respected and highly qualified wine men in France, and introduced to mature claret - "wines between 40 and 50 years old which were still sound and possessed magnificent bouquet and flavour".

Schubert returned from France inspired with a determination to produce "an Australian red wine that would last at least 20 years and comparable with those produced in Bordeaux...". He developed Grange Hermitage beginning with the 1951 vintage, using Shiraz grapes (rather than the Cabernet Sauvignon of Bordeaux) because Shiraz was the only quality red wine variety consistently available at the time. The first commercial Grange was the 1952 vintage, released in 1955.

-- Winemaker Max Schubert

So it seems that even though we are talking about the same grape, it certainly bears different names depending on who you are talking to, and as you can see from this next quote, it seems to be evolving into a modern interpretation of a young, flavorful, fruity wine.

A good deal of syrah, that well-loved Rhone grape, has been refashioned as shiraz. American pinot gris, once a rarity outside the West Coast, has been gaining traction nationwide as pinot grigio. One grape, two names.

While syrah has long been grown here in small amounts, Australians planted shiraz in vast quantities. Their success in selling fruity, affordable shiraz to Americans in the past 20 years has been such that the Aussie Wonder is now the second-most popular imported varietal, according to data from the Impact Databank 2004 wine study.

Eager to share in that good fortune, U.S. wineries have not simply rebranded syrah as shiraz; they tinkered with their taste profiles to produce punchy, lively, rather Down Under wines emblematic of the so-called New World style.

"A wine, by any other name, can sell better", by Jon Bonne

Posted by Michael at July 10, 2004 04:19 PM