French Wines versus Aussie Shiraz

by Jeremy Allen

Those of us who find ourselves on the wrong side of the age of 50, invariably began our love of wine with France.  I had never heard of Shiraz and California was still proving itself.  France was the gold standard, and that's what I drank.  Just 20 years ago, the wines in my cellar were a 100% French.

The change started in California.  Highlighted by an American win at the famed tasting in Paris, Californian wines, and especially those from the Napa Valley, challenged Bordeaux's supremacy as the gold standard for Cabernet Sauvignon.  The new world began to provide an intensity of fruit that eluded Bordeaux.

The next challenge was with the Syrah/Shiraz grape.  The new world challenged the fabled Rhone Valley in both California and Australia, but it was Australian Shiraz that provided the starkest contrast.  Until the mid-90s, if we were aware of high end Aussie Shiraz, it was Penfold's Grange or Henschke’s Hill of Grace.  Most of the Shiraz in the US was "industrial swill" by the big companies.  A new generation of young Australian winemakers discovered that the 50 -- 100 year-old vines, that provided the fruit for the fortified wines (as this Aussie staple was seldom exported), were actually capable of producing wonderful Shiraz.

The Revolution began.  For the cognoscenti, names like Dave Powell at Torbreck, Sarah and Sparky Marquis then at Fox Creek, Chris Ringland at Rockford and the eponymous Drew Noon, all began to burst onto the scene.

The Grand Debate began, and it was focused in few distinct, but complementary areas.

1. When we tried to describe these wines, we begin to use words like flavor, tasting intensity and WOW.  Curiously, we had never used these words to describe French wine.  Instead words like elegance, finesse, balance and Terroir were used.  In retrospect, this was the crux of the difference.  The Francophile traditionalists were horrified at Aussie Shiraz.  But the more adventurous palates began to say "WOW!"  Perhaps elegance and finesse were code words for lack of taste and flavor.  Perhaps the concept of Terroir was used correctly some of the time, but more often it was a code word for unclean winemaking procedures or cork trouble.  Perhaps the mustiness, to which we were so accustomed, was simply a sign of a poorly made wine.

2. Vintage variability in Bordeaux, for example is huge.  There were so many disappointments during the 70s.  Most, but not all, vintages in the 80s were good and the experts said that Bordeaux was responding to the new world challenge by cleaning up its act.  But then the disasters of 1991, 1992 and 1993 occurred, so what was happening?

 In Australia for sure, some vintages were better than others, but no vintages were bad.  Why?   The answer was simple.  South Australia always has many more hours of sunshine than France.  The grapes ripen more fully.  There is also much less rainfall around harvest time so wine growers are not tempted to pick unripe fruit too early.

 [Let me digress.  I am writing this while in the Barossa Valley during the 2006 harvest of March/April.  Right in the middle of the scheduled harvest, between one and 2 inches of rain fell.  In most areas of the world, that would have spelled disaster and, indeed, some Aussie wineries rushed to pick their fruit ahead of a forecasted storm.  However, others waited.  They knew that dry air would return and there was little chance of the grape clusters rotting on the vine.  They’re actually cheered the rain (I am not kidding!).  The rain lowered the sugar levels allowing for up to two weeks longer hang time and greater phenological ripeness. I cannot wait for the top winemakers to release these wines in two or three years.  The results will be telling.]

3. The price/quality ratio is critical for any consumer of any product.  The price of wine can be objectively measured, the quality is much more subjective.  When it comes to reds, my palate seems to agree with Robert Parker much more often than not, so I comfortably use his numerical scores as a measure of my subjective palate. ( If you disagree, that's fine.  Just substitute your own preferred ranking for the purposes of this analysis.)  I then started to compare the prices of similarly rated wines from France and Australia.  On average Aussie wines are less than half the price of their French equivalents.  Enough said.

4. The above arguments are compelling.  So how do the Francophiles respond?  The most frequent retort of the old world traditionalists is that you can't pair Aussie Shiraz with food so basically you shouldn't drink it.  But there are two fallacies in this point of view. 

The first concerns when we drink wine.  I drink wine at on a few occasions:

1. On its own, when I relax, usually with friends.
2. While I cook.
3. Sipping between courses of a meal, and
4. While I eat.

Only category 4 involves food pairing, and for me personally, it involves less than 10% of the wine I drink.

The second fallacy concerns what we eat.  Classic French dishes (fall of butter, cream and duck fat) are becoming less and less part of a healthy diet and and easy to prepare style of cooking.  More often I am eating easily prepared or even store bought prepared dishes.  These frequently involved spices like cumin, Thai spices, barbecue or even a pepperoni pizza.  This type of food needs an Aussie Shiraz.  Enough said.

I have many wine drinking buddies who are confirmed traditionalists.  Thank goodness for them.  If everybody drank Aussie Shiraz as their wine of choice, there simply wouldn't be enough of the good stuff to go around.

Jeremy Allen

PS why do the traditionalists, when they come to visit, always want me to serve my Shiraz?