Syrah is an ancient grape, the iconic variety of France’s Rhône Valley and beloved around the world, whether bearing its own name or the popular Australian version, Shiraz.
Buy me a glass of wine
Now you can buy me a “glass of wine” to chip in $5 toward our expenses. I don’t accept free wine, so every small donation helps support our expenses. Click to learn more! buymeacoffee.com/RobG
Browse the world’s ten best value wines on Wine-Searcher.com!
Like just about every wine grape with a history, Syrah comes with assorted birth legends for us to choose from:
• Perhaps the lovable (and enduring) legend takes us back to the Crusades. According to this story, the French warrior Gaspard de Sterimberg, sick of battle, rode home to the hills of the Northern Rhône carrying grapevine cuttings from Shiraz in Persia in his saddlebags. Planted in France, the vines produced luscious black grapes that made a wondrous wine, and de Sterimberg called his mountaintop home “Hermitage,” where he would live in peace and study war no more.
• Don’t tell that one to a Rhône wine maker, though. Back in the early ’00s I had a chance to stand amid Syrah vines atop the Hermitage hill overlooking a great bend in the Rhône. Looking out across the vineyards and the valley from our post next to Sterimberg’s ancient stone chapel, a wine maker told me a different story: Syrah, he said, has grown on the Rhône’s hillsides and valleys since Caesar’s time, when the Romans brought the vines to what was then Gaul.
• And now science, as it so often does, knocks over all the legends and brings us a factual, if not particularly romantic, next page of the story: Recent DNA profiling reveals that Syrah is a long-ago cross between two relatively minor Rhône varieties that are now rarely planted: The black-skinned grape Dureza and the white Mondeuse Blanche.
This lab-born reality eliminates both the de Sterimberg legend and the idea of Roman origin, but there’s a plus for the Rhône: Syrah is neither Persian nor Roman but originated right there in the neighborhood from a crossing of indigenous grapes. Vive France!
Domaine Gassier’s sustainable vineyards overlooking the Rhône valley.
One thing is sure: Syrah has been around for a very long time, long enough that the wine makers of the Rhône have gotten it right. Syrah has become popular in most world regions: As Shiraz, it’s the mainstay grape among Australian reds. It’s popular in California, and just about any wine-growing region with a temperate growing season has given it a try.
As of 2016, Wine-Searcher reports on its Syrah page, just over one-third of all the world’s Syrah was grown in France, followed by Australia with about one-fifth and Spain with 10%.
Syrah is often made as a single-varietal wine. Its style varies, depending largely on climate but also on vineyard and wine making decisions, from lean and green, laced with fragrant black pepper, to bigger, riper styles focused on black plums and blueberries and even prunes.
Ripen the grapes to high sugar and thus higher alcohol levels, perhaps load the result up with oak – as Australians and Californians often do – and you’ll get a blockbuster of a wine. Or blend it – Grenache and Mourvèdre are its usual companions, along with Carignan and others in some regions – and you can make a food-friendly wine that cam reach its most popular expression in the warmer Southern Rhône and Languedoc.
Today’s featured wine, Domaine Gassier 2017 Fleur de Syrah ($14.99) comes from the Costières de Nîmes, overloooking the marshes of Camargue in the far Southern Rhône. But its rich, dark, and complex style and minerality likely would not have made Gaspard de Sterimberg unhappy if he had been able to sip some in his Hermitage home. I highly recommend it. You’ll find my tasting notes below.
Support The Wine Advisor:
“Buy me a glass of wine”
Hi, everyone! As many of you know, I don’t accept free wine or other gratuities from the industry, so small donations and a select group of carefully chosen advertisers make this publication possible. Now you can lend a hand directly and cheaply: Buy me a glass of wine for just $5 to chip in on our expenses. Every ten contributions adds up to $50, enough to buy wine for review in at least two editions of The 30 Second Wine Advisor.
Click to learn more! buymeacoffee.com/RobG
Today’s Tasting Report
Domaine Gassier 2017 Fleur de Syrah Costières de Nîmes ($14.99)
So organic and sustainable that even its Smart Green synthetic cork is 100% recyclable, Domaine Gassier’s Fleur de Syrah is 90% Syrah with a splash of Grenache to brighten it. Very dark purple in color all the way to the edge, it offers appetizing aromas of plums and black pepper at first. Given a half-hour to open up in the glass, it develops more complex nuances: A whiff of violets, a faint undercurrent of licorice. On the palate it’s mouth-filling with good fruit-acid balance. Tasty black fruit and pepper notes last and last, with stony minerality peeking through. Hefty 14.5% alcohol calls for your attention, but the wine comes across as balanced and approachable, with tannins present but integrating well. U.S. importer: W. Direct, Lawrence, Kansas, and other regional distributors. (Jan. 25, 2022)
FOOD MATCH: The back label suggests red meats, stews, and spicy dishes, and that’s an easy choice for this sturdy red. The producer’s website offers a broader range of pairings, including mushrooms, which worked for us in an intense pasta dish of bucatini with roasted mushrooms in their own sauce.
WHEN TO DRINK: The winery suggests enjoying the wine now or cellaring it for five to seven years, and that sounds about right to me.
VALUE:
Wine-Searcher.com shows a $16 average U.S. retail; I paid a buck less. Frankly, it’s an excellent wine and wouldn’t be a bad buy for quite a few dollars more.
WEB LINK:
Here’s the producer’s fact sheet in English on the 2019 vintage; most of the details will be similar to this 2017.
FIND THIS WINE ONLINE:
Check prices and find vendors for Gassier Fleur de Syrah on Wine-Searcher.com.
Learn more about Costières de Nîmes at this Wine-Searcher link, where you’ll find dozens of other wines from the region with price and vendor information.
Browse Wine-Searcher’s Syrah info page with its Best Value Syrah Wines.
Wine Focus February 2022:
Syrah & Open that Bottle MONTH!
Bring your Syrah and join us in Wine Focus in our WineLovers Discussion Group in February, as we combine the topics Syrah (since Syrah day is February 16; and Open that Bottle Night, which comes in February, but we like to take the whole month to choose “that bottle” that’s been hanging around your cellar or wine rack for a long time, waiting for just the right occasion, and just go ahead and open it.
More to come! Check in at Wine Focus February 2022, and say hello!
Today’s Sponsor:
Explore Wine-Searcher
Wine-Searcher.com is the place to go online if you want to find where to buy a particular wine that interests you. What’s more, Wine-Searcher.com offers so much more. It’s well worth a visit just to discover its many features, including its popular list of the world’s Top 10 Best Value Wines.
Good wines we’ve tried under $10.99!
Want tips to still more good, inexpensive wines? Here are Wine-Searcher links to vendors and prices for a bunch more wines for $10.99 or less that I’ve told you about in recent years. In some cases the prices may have risen over the $10.99 mark since I reviewed them, but they should still be excellent bargains. Please tell us about your favorites!
- Famille Perrin 2019 “La Vielle Ferme” Rouge ($7.99)
- Querceto 2019 Chianti ($10.99)
- Porto Kopke Fine Ruby and Tawny Port ($9.99/375ml)
- La Fiera 2016 Montepulciano d’Abruzzo ($8.99)
- La Vieille Ferme Vin de France Rosé ($8.99)
- La Fiera Montepulciano d’Abruzzo ($8.99)
- Laroque Cité de Carcassonne Cabernet Franc ($9.99)
- Domaine de Pouy 2016 Côtes de Gascogne ($7.99)
- Alamos Mendoza Malbec ($9.99)
- Caposaldo Chianti ($8.99)
- d’Arenberg McLaren Vale “The Stump Jump” ($9.99)
Sponsor the Wine Advisor.
We appreciate your support
Support The 30 Second Wine Advisor and help us pay the rent while reaching 25,000 dedicated readers with your sponsorship message in this space, at the top of this E-letter, and on our social media. If you’re an established business in wine, food, and similar ventures, there’s no better way to focus your message toward an audience that comes here for just those topics. See our Sponsorship Page, or email Robin Garr for more information.
Wine Forum and Social Media
If you have questions, comments or ideas to share about today’s article or wine in general, you’re always welcome to drop by our online WineLovers Discussion Group, the Internet’s first and most civil online community.
Discussions are open for public viewing, but you must register to post. If you’re a Facebook user, you can join our forum with a single click! All you need to do is visit the forum and click “Social Login” at upper right.
We’d also be delighted to have you visit and “like” our WineLovers Facebook Page. This way you can get Facebook notifications when there’s a new The 30 Second Wine Advisor issue or a topic of particular interest on the WineLovers Discussion Group (WLDG).
