Syrah: testing the cool limits

If you have ever wondered what inspires us to make our wines, pull out a map of European wine regions and put your finger on the Mosel Valley in Germany (riesling). If you drag your finger south, you’ll come to Alsace in France (riesling, pinot gris, gewurztraminer, muscat blanc). Keep going south and you’ll come to Burgundy (chardonnay, pinot noir). All these varieties are in our vineyard.

Always restless, we have also been tempted by the wines from a region just south of Burgundy – Côte-Rôtie. This is the coolest outpost of syrah/shiraz in France and produces red wines very different to the bigger, bolder red wines made further down the Rhone Valley. Côte-Rôtie reds are refined, elegant, perfumed wines showing fresh, red fruit characters, spice and sometimes a whiff of pepper.

But could we emulate the style at our cool site at Colmar Estate?

The first step was to seek out an early ripening clone of syrah/shiraz and we settled on the romantically named R6WV28, the first to be grown in Orange. Once the vines were established, we knew that warmish seasons would be required to get the grapes fully ripe. In the cooler La Nina years we blended the first crops with riper pinot noir. We were surprised and delighted with the results and we’ll experiment further with these blends.

And then came the warmer 2024 vintage which brought our syrah/shiraz to perfect ripeness. Oh my, what a wine. The aroma is stunning – quite floral, almost like red roses – and so unlike the majority the Australian wines labelled shiraz. Cool climates give ripe flavours at moderate alcohol, just 13.5 per cent alcohol in this case, enough to give our wine presence but without the heaviness of so many Aussie reds. The palate is medium-bodied, elegant and just plain delicious. This wine has just been released, try it for yourself.

Mother Nature delivered the goods again in the warm 2025 vintage and excellent ripeness was achieved in our syrah/shiraz. An experiment in the winery with a high percentage of whole bunches in the ferment has produced a wine with a pronounced floral aroma. Stunning! This wine will mature quietly in the winery for a while yet.

The 2026 vintage was cooler and later than the preceding two, providing a challenge to get our syrah/shiraz fully ripe. Yet the glorious autumn was sunny, mild and very dry so we just waited and waited, finally picking the fruit on 22 April at a baumé of 13.3. Spot on!

So, what may have appeared to be a crazy-brave decision is now yielding some lovely red wines in a very distinctive style – classy, refined and complex. So exciting.

Oh, and we are going to label them SYRAH.