Aussie Shiraz with a Froggie Accent

If we put drinking political correctness aside for the moment, it’s becoming clearer than ever that there’s more to shiraz than the marriage of ripe, jammy fruit with planks, staves or shavings of American oak. Sure, ripe shiraz and American oak might go together like pancakes and maple syrup, but there’s a growing number of Australian shirazes made with an accent more Gallic than Yankee.

Go on, Oliver, say it. They’re made in a so-called ‘French’ style. Their palates are fleshier, their tannins are softer and their flavours, even when quite young, are clearly evolving more towards spicy, gamey expressions of shiraz, without compromising the intense blackcurrant and redcurrant flavours of the variety.

This is nothing new to the seasoned Australian shiraz drinker. It took at least a decade after Max Schubert invented Grange for the maturation of shiraz in small new oak to catch on, and by the time it did shiraz was playing second violin to cabernet sauvignon. Only in the last five or so years has shiraz been given equivalent oak treatment to cabernet. This phenomenon of shiraz with smart new oak is new indeed.

Several people, Brian Croser included, remember the glee with which Len Evans would put up for tasting an old La Chapelle Hermitage from Jaboulet against an old Hunter shiraz, only to find that most people would pick them the wrong way around. Older-style, peppery, spicy, fleshy Australian shirazes occasionally had much in common with the wines of the Rhone which, naturally enough, is where the original Australian plantings of the variety came from.

Shiraz is the most important quality red variety of the Rhone Valley, north to south. Down south near Avignon, at Chateauneuf-du-Pape, it works in tandem with grenache. Although there are another eleven varieties which are legally entitled to play a role in the wines of this area, the region’s best wines are those with a higher proportion of grenache and shiraz. With such a diversity of variety, quality of vineyard site and winemaking technique, there are countless variations of Chateauneuf-du-Pape wines. The best, however, have great depth and power, with a firm but subdued tannic structure which can preserve them for decades. The fruit flavours are frequently spicy, brambly and wild, evolving with maturity towards earthy, kernel-like gamey characters.

Moving northwards towards Tournon, shiraz is the exclusive grape of the red wines of Hermitage and its surrounding appellation of Crozes-Hermitage. Expressed in the best reds of Hermitage, shiraz fashions deeply coloured wines of greater concentration, pepper and perfume. Although the American media would encourage them to imbue their wines with more overt oak character, most of the top growers still ensure that oak plays a supportive, rather than a lead role, in their wines. Reflecting the cooler nature of the northern Rhone climate, Hermitage reds can mature into leaner, elegant wines able to be confused with the clarets of Bordeaux.

Further north near Vienne is the wonderful but tiny appellation of Cote-Rotie, a steep-sided rock which appears to have risen straight out of the winding Rhone itself. Small amounts of a local white variety, viognier, are blended to shiraz, giving a fineness to the wine’s acid structure and additional fragrance to its nose. Cote-Rotie wines of great years have a suppleness that is almost Burgundian; a creamy, spicy fleshiness and soft tannins which with their flavours of forest fruits are completely and utterly seductive.

Today there’s a resurgence of interest in Rhone-like shiraz, perhaps because some of us recognise the danger of becoming completely bored by the sameness of the modern alternative. It’s no accident that the most Rhone-like of Australian shirazes come from cooler climates or, in the case of the Hunter Valley, from fluky, cooler vintages such as 1993, which promises to be one of the greatest on record.

None of this would be news to Bailey Carrodus, who hasn’t been given due credit for the radical styles of shiraz-based wines he has released under his Yarra Yering Dry Red No. 2 label for nigh on twenty years. In 1969 he even planted other obscure red Rhone varieties and viognier to blend to his shiraz, creating a wine which in premium seasons is truly multi-layered in its complexity, based on succulent, ripe fruit without ever approaching jamminess. Small plantings of marsanne even find their way into the blend, although the white component never exceeds 5 to 6.

‘I wasn’t setting out to imitate anyone when I planted these varieties’, he says, ‘for I think that good ideas always need adapting to their own environment. You can’t transpose them directly, for our fruit is different to that grown in any French region. I believe that straight shiraz takes about ten years to become truly complex, but have found that by adding the white varieties I can increase its complexity at an early age without impairing their keeping quality.’

The top vintages of the Underhill Shiraz by Yarra Yering especially 1992 are also remarkably crafted, silky-smooth reds with genuine Rhone pretensions. It’s not without note that this has become Yarra Yering’s biggest export wine, greatly preferred in countries like Switzerland because of its close resemblance to Rhone Valley wines.

Of the other Australian wineries to fashion Rhone-like shiraz, several more are from Victoria. I have been taken by the recent vintages of Bannockburn Shiraz, which Gary Farr has modelled on Rhone styles since 1991 a la Cote-Rotie for me and the superb Hermitage-like qualities of the Paringa Estate Shiraz 1993, which the 1994 approaches.

WA shirazes fashioned like the French include those of Cape Mentelle and Evans & Tate Margaret River; Killerby south-west coastal plain; Goundry, Plantagenet and Chatsfield Lower Great Southern. Please login to post comment