Hi, I'm Chris Barlow from Hospitality Crew, welcome to the website and the content which is on wine education. It is my pleasure to present a short snippet of information about various grape types and wine styles over the next few weeks and today we're looking at Shiraz.

Shiraz, being a variety in Australia, which is pretty much grown everywhere, it's a grape which lends itself to growing in pretty much every region in the world. In France and California it's known as "Syrah". But Shiraz as it is in Australia is one of our older varieties. Some of the oldest Shiraz vines are grown here, some over 150 years old.

We have pretty much every wine region in Australia growing Shiraz right now including the very cold areas of Southern Victoria, and also in New Zealand, there're experimenting with Shiraz. But here in Australia we tend to produce that very ripe and dark purple coloured fruit which gives us a wonderful soft, round and heavy type of wine.

So a kind of wine that tends to go along with grilled meats, and when Shiraz is aged very well it matches up nicely with braised dishes like Osso Bucco and things like that, heavy braised flavours.

But we've chosen one example which is from McLarenVale today. This is an area of Australia that produces perhaps the most approachable Shiraz, when it's young, and probably quite the very best bargains in Australia come from McLarenVale Shiraz. Some old vines, but they produce it in a way which lends itself to friendly prices at the bottle shop.

This is a "Pirramimma" from McLarenVale. We're just going to have a little look at the colour, its density. From McLarenVale, we tend to get chocolatety overtones in shiraz and occasionally a little bit of anise or liquorish type of flavour.

I don't know if you can pick that up there, but it's an incredibly dense wine, a very deep brick red, purple wine, almost impenetrable. The colour, you can’t see the bottom of the glass and there's only a 100ml or so in there.

In France, Shiraz has been blended with a white grape call "Viognier" for hundreds of years. This is kind of a new discovery to Australia, and the addition of a small amount of the Viognier in the blend, or it's actually blended together prior to fermentation has a unique effect on the Shiraz. It brings out an increased colour and perfume and it's only about 5 to 10 percent of Viognier that goes into the Shiraz to have this effect.

So, you will be seeing a lot of Shiraz Viognier blends around if you haven’t already. It’s a wine which is perhaps a little bit softer in its youth and more approachable but it also produces a sweet sort of perfume quality.

So Shiraz, Viognier, keep an eye out for that. Our 100% percent Shiraz from McLarenVale - it is from a great year '02. All of South Australia in '02 Barossa, Clare, Coonawarra, and in this case McLarenVale had an outstanding year, so if you are able to find any '02 reds from that part of the world and particularly Shiraz you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Delicious!. That's Shiraz, a little snippet. Please enjoy and its many variations from around the world.
Australia having the best value Shiraz anywhere and pick one up before the next BBQ.

Cheers!

Key Notes from this episode:
- Shiraz aka "Syrah" is:
Rich;
Full-Bodied;
Tannic;
Plummy;
Chocolatety; and
Peppery;

- Home is in Rome, Northern Rhone.
- Australia is home to the oldest Shiraz vines in the world
- Penfolds Grange and Henschke Hill of Grace represent the epitome of Shiraz expression in Australia.