Syrah Slides Right Past Pinot Noir as the New Darling of California

Syrah is the new darling of California. That position was recently held by Pinot Noir, but the luster seems to have worn off the pride of Burgundy and now shifted to the great grape of the Rhône. When you offer to pour people a great new Pinot from the Alexander Valley or Santa Maria, they shrug their shoulders and say “OK,” as though you were asking them if it’s all right to change the channel they were watching from ESPN to ESPN 2. But if you offer to pour them an exciting new Syrah from … wherever, they perk up and say, “Great! I’ll go run and get my Riedel Syrah glasses.” I have to admit to occasionally behaving like this, but it’s not because I favor one grape over the other. On a desert island, actually, I’d rather be stocked with Pinot (especially if it was, say, 1985 Côte de Nuit). But when it comes to California, I get excited about a new Syrah because there’s the hope that it’s actually going to be fantastic. There’s plenty of great Pinot running around, has been for years. But Syrah is another story. Despite the lavish praise it’s gotten in the press, the glamorous cover shots on certain outsized magazines and such, most of the Syrah – even on the high end – that California pumps out just isn’t very good. Well, it might be good to you, if you like over-the-top, jammy, oaky, alcoholic syrup that amounts to what I call liquid blueberry pie and vanilla ice cream. These wines will make it look like you’ve been sucking on squid ink, and they go with food about as well as a bottle of cough syrup. But if you like Syrah’s classical aromatic attributes of pepper, game, iron, leather, herbs and blackberries, you’re going to be hard-pressed to find that many satisfying wines in the golden state. Why is this? There are a number of factors. First, it’s planted in many places that are just too hot. When the site is too warm, the grapes develop sugar ripeness long before they develop phenolic, or flavor, ripeness. In order to get the flavors, winegrowers have to leave the grapes hanging on the vines, accruing massive sugar levels along the way. Those sugars equate to high alcohols. Alcohol is a solvent. When you put a high-alcohol wine into a new barrel, it extracts the oak flavoring much faster than a wine with less hooch. Thus, you have your jammy, hot (wine slang for “alcoholic”), oak bombs that some people let pass for good wine. The No. 1 perpetrator of such wine perversion is Australia and its so-called Shiraz. No. 2 is California. In France, for instance, the Rhône Valley, Syrah’s true homeland, is divided into North and South. Now, these two places are not that far apart from each other, but the climate is different enough to warrant a distinction. In the cooler North, Syrah is the one and only red grape, giving us treasures like Côte-Rôtie and Hermitage, along with the likes of Cornas and Crozes-Hermitage. In the Southern Rhône, Syrah is the minor grape, giving way to blends of Grenache, Carignan and Mourvèdre, varieties that prefer more heat. When it comes to California, all these grapes are planted together (though 90 percent of Rhône variety acreage is given to Syrah) in spots that are simply too warm for Syrah. In fact, the most promising Syrah is coming out of the same cooler areas that give the best Pinot: the Sonoma Coast, Santa Rita Hills and the cooler parts of Mendocino county. Good, complex, interesting Syrah also depends on the will of the winemaker. Planting only in cool sites doesn’t go far enough. Winemakers need to learn to pick earlier. They’re typically so fearful of any underripe flavors that they err on the side of overripe nine times out of 10, resulting in raisin juice – those baked, jammy flavors again. Another thing winemakers might do to increase complexity and nuance is to play around with adding stems to the fermentations. A common practice in the Rhône, stems can broaden and open up the texture of a wine, while adding peppery nuance. The fear for California winemakers is the “green” or “stemmy” flavors that can result, but judicious application of mostly ripe stems can go a long way to making more interesting wine. That said, here are a few of the Syrahs that I have recently been enjoying. Many of them are from smaller-production, boutique wineries, but if you can get your hands on them at a restaurant or good shop, they’re worth a taste: Qupe Bien Nacido Hillside from Santa Maria; Alba “Reva” from the Edna Valley; Austin Hope Syrah and Saxum from Paso Robles; Pax (a winery specializing in Syrah in Sonoma County – the wines are a little big for me, but he is getting savory aromatic complexity in his wines); Peay Vineyards from the Sonoma Coast, and almost anything from Edmunds St. John and Copain, which make wines from all over the state. Good Syrah should be the standard, not the exception to the rule. Don’t be fooled by the famous critics who advocate the King Kong wines. Those wines may stand out at tasting, but I’m talking about the wines that you actually want to drink. You know, with food?