What do we know of its origins? Syrah comes from the Rhone Valley in Eastern France, where its apparent forebears, Dureza and Mondeuse Blanche, have been cultivated since Roman times. Two Northern Rhone regions, Hermitage and Cote Rotie are generally acknowledged today as producing the world’s finest wines made from this variety.
Syrah (then spelt “scyras” although probably pronounced as it is now) was brought to Australia in 1832 by Scotsman James Busby, considered the founding father of Australian viticulture. (Busby incidentally was British Resident in the Bay of Islands later in the 1830s and played a major role in the preparation and signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, as well as being the first person to make wine in New Zealand). He took several hundred vine cuttings to Australia, collected from all over France. From his initial plantings in the Hunter Valley syrah has spread all over and is now Australia’s most widely planted grape. These days it is called “shiraz” in Australia, although when and how that name came to be applied is lost in the mists of time.
Most New Zealand plantings of syrah are in Hawkes Bay. Some in that region see it as the great red hope which will re-establish Hawkes Bay as New Zealand’s premier red wine region. We are demonstrating that Matakana is also capable of producing very smart syrah. In this region, like its Bordeaux cousins cabernet and merlot, syrah tends to express warm, earthy complexity while Hawkes Bay versions can be fruit dominant. Both regions, along with Waiheke, are now producing some knockout wines from it.
Why has it taken so long for syrah to emerge in New Zealand? Maybe the wine industry here has always looked across the Tasman, seen how apparently well they do it there, and been a bit daunted about trying it here. However tastes in wine are changing as wine drinkers become more knowing. Australian shiraz has a “blockbuster” reputation while New Zealand syrahs tend to be more elegant and restrained – more like their Rhone Valley counterparts perhaps.
Indicative of how well we can do syrah is the fact that New Zealand versions are starting to show very well in Australian tastings, and in a number have outperformed the locals. While we are still tiny in volume it seems likely that the winegrowers of Oz are starting to look anxiously at our syrah efforts just as we have respected theirs for so long.
Robin Ransom
Originally published in Mahurangi Matters, November 2008
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( 3 / 381 )It has been said that what distinguishes the human species from other mammals is that we are the only political animal. Our need to compete amongst ourselves also makes us fairly unique in the animal kingdom. Many human endeavours in addition to sport lend themselves very well to the competitive urge – politics, business, war, fishing, dog breeding, vegetable growing, ballroom dancing, tiddlywinks and so on. In most of these activities either an obvious outcome or the use of valid scoring protocols mean there can be clear winners and losers.
There are also human endeavours which are not so obviously suited to competition. Art, literature, and dare I say it – wine. Please note that what I am about to say is a wholly personal view.
For winemakers, good results in wine competitions can confer powerful marketing benefits. We experienced this in our early days while attempting to establish a profile. Winning medals in competitions and high scores in magazine articles really helped put us on the map. Wine competitions can also be useful for consumers who are less knowledgeable about wines by giving them some names to seek on crowded supermarket shelves. But this is where a cautionary note or two needs to be issued.
Wines can differ from each other in extremely subtle ways. So many variables come together in the growing of grapes and the making of wine that the range of aroma and flavour nuances is vast - virtually unlimited. Combine this with the fact that the appreciation of wine’s aromas and flavours is a deeply personal thing (like art and literature), then you have a situation where it is impossible to make valid, universally applicable judgements about merit.
On top of this, the conditions under which wines are judged in competitions make objectivity in evaluation impossible. Judges taste wines in “flights” comprising large numbers of samples and this goes on over many hours. During this process they are expected to be able to bring a wholly objective approach to bear on each and every wine they taste. Can you imagine being able to score the 67th wine you taste in a day in exactly the same way as the first, and to distinguish between them to the point where you can give them all a mark out of 100?
Pretence at such accuracy is a fanciful fiction. But to be fair, the bottom line for the inexperienced punter is that a wine with an award or a high score should be of a good drinkable standard.
Robin Ransom
President, Matakana Winegrowers Inc.
robin@ransomwines.co.nz.
Originally published in Mahurangi Matters, October 2008
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( 2.9 / 363 )Last year I received a big response when I wrote about the myriad of compliance issues winegrowers are faced with, and how they impinge mightily upon our time. I did not include an estimate of what it all costs in money – that would be too depressing to calculate and contemplate.
As of September 1 a whole new layer of compliance has been added to the burden. A requirement of the Wine Act 2003 is that all wineries must submit a “Wine Standards Management Plan” to the New Zealand Food Safety Authority. The NZ Wine Institute did go to bat for winegrowers when this piece of heavy-handed bureaucracy was mooted to try and convince them how unnecessary it is for winegrowers, but to little avail.
The Food Safety Authority is motivated almost wholly by the need to avoid the contamination of food. As we have seen in recent years this has become a major issue through the apparently growing prevalence of many nasty biological agents which can cause severe illness. But wine, whilst technically a food, is totally “safe” from biological contaminants - its alcohol is enough to kill any microbial life likely to be a health threat.
We are henceforth obliged to establish and maintain data recording systems in excessive detail. Again the Wine Institute has come to our assistance by developing a standardized Code of Practice. But this requires comprehensive documentation of much of our grape growing activity and all of our winemaking operation.
When we have put together our plan a “Verifier” spends a day or so at our premises, entirely at our cost, checking our set up and all of our records against the plan to ensure that we are doing exactly what the plan says. It is not entirely clear how often we have to get “verified” or what happens if the verifier finds inconsistency between practice and plan. But one thing for certain is that it will involve more time and expense for the winegrower.
It is highly unlikely that winegrowers who already live or die according to the quality – “safety” if you like, of their product, are going to do anything they are not already doing to improve their practice as a result of this.
The thinking behind this sort of bureaucracy is that producers cannot be trusted to do the right thing, and the consumer has to be protected by Nanny State against these rogues. Winegrowers who value their integrity and are proud of their product may justifiably feel insulted by this new imposition, not to mention aggrieved by the additional time wasting and cost it requires.
Robin Ransom
President, Matakana Winegrowers Inc.
robin@ransomwines.co.nz
Originally published in Mahurangi Matters, September 2008
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( 3 / 363 )This is the time of year when the hard work is over, we can stop muttering darkly at the sky and indulge some finer sentiments about wine. One enduring idea is the relationship between art, thought and wine, and wine’s apparent role in inspiring poets, artists, musicians and writers down through the ages. Following are a few ideas about the marvel that is wine, elegantly expressed by some thinkers and artists and ranging in time from about 2500 years ago, to the present:
Where there is no wine, love perishes, and everything else that is pleasant to man. Euripides (484 – 407 BC), Greek playwright.
Nothing more excellent or valuable than wine has ever been granted by the gods to man.
Plato, (427 – 347 BC), Greek philosopher.
Without good wine, spring is not spring for me. Hafiz, (1325 – 1389), Persian poet.
Wine…one sip of this will bathe the drooping spirits in delight beyond the bliss of dreams. John Milton (1608 – 1674), English poet.
Wine cheers the sad, revives the old, inspires the young, makes weariness forget his toil and… opens a new world, when this, the present, palls. Lord Byron, (1788 – 1824), English poet.
…good wine, well drunk, can lend majesty to the human spirit. M.F.K. Fisher (1908 – 1992), American writer.
Music is a psychological landscape, with all sorts of indefinable things. Wine is the same way. It has tastes that are very hard to define. When I drink a great wine, I get a sense of breadth – it’s like a chord sounding and echoing. Michael Tilson Thomas, Symphony Conductor.
My idea of heaven is to sit in a favourite restaurant with cheese and a glass of wine. Wendy Wasserstein, American playwright.
Some of these thoughts are perhaps a little overstated – poets after all are inclined to be lyrical, but there is a nub of wisdom and truth in all of them. So it is appropriate to give the last word to Pliny, Roman Scholar and Writer, who, around the time of Christ, coined the still famous aphorism in vino veritas – in wine, truth.
Robin Ransom
President, Matakana Winegrowers Inc.
robin@ransomwines.co.nz
Originally published in Mahurangi Matters, August 2008
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( 3 / 380 )A number of research studies in the last 20 years or so have linked health benefits with moderate wine consumption. Most of these have focused on the anti-oxidant qualities of red wine in particular, with positive effects for inhibiting cancers, vascular disease, diabetes and other “lifestyle” conditions. A study conducted at Harvard Medical School in 2006 found that a compound in the skins of grapes called resveratrol was closely associated with these effects.
More recently a large-scale study in Scandinavia aimed at isolating environmental and genetic risk factors for rheumatoid arthritis, found that those who consumed alcohol regularly had a significantly lower risk of developing the disease.
Many of these studies have been epidemiological in nature. That is, they look at the health effects on populations – statistical effects, rather than health effects within individuals. In studies of this kind it can be difficult to isolate and evaluate all of the population characteristics which can contribute to the findings. But the sheer persistence and repetitive nature of “wine-friendly” research findings does make one wonder….
Another recent piece of research, this one from the US and not about health, looked at whether there is a link between the price people pay for wine and their enjoyment of it. This study was based upon a large sample of people doing blind tasting, so that they did not know what wine they were drinking. The sample contained both “expert” wine drinkers (those who had had some sort of training in wine appreciation), and “non-experts”. The findings showed that the non-experts tended to enjoy cheaper wines slightly more than expensive ones, while the experts preferred the more expensive wines.
I am prepared to bet that “the sugar effect” played a significant role in producing these findings. A good deal of wine is bottled these days with a little residual grape sugar, in order to broaden its appeal to the wider “non-expert” population, in a world awash with sugary beverages and foods. Because of the market these wines are produced for, they are made in large volumes and are generally cheaper. Most “experts” probably continue to prefer wines which are made in a more traditional dry style, with all of the grape sugar fermented out, because they complement food better. These wines are often made in smaller batches, with more care and attention both in the vineyard and winery, all of which makes them more expensive to produce.
Robin Ransom
President, Matakana Winegrowers Inc.
robin@ransomwines.co.nz
Originally published in Mahurangi Matters, July 2008
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