After college, I started working with Christy Frank at Frankly Wines in New York City. I’d spent a year as an exchange student in Melbourne, and had visited wineries in Mornington Peninsula and Tasmania, so I was interested to explore the front shelf of the store, where Frank displayed some of Australia’s quirkier wines. Their colorful labels looked like pop art, and when I mentioned that I wasn’t interested in heavy, jammy, oaky, high-alcohol shiraz, she pointed me towards some lighter styles from McLaren Vale, the Adelaide Hills and Victoria.
One of those wines—the 2013 Jamsheed Beechworth Syrah from Yarra Valley—had me packing my bags and heading back to Victoria last summer. It was unlike any other Australian syrah I had tasted—savory, spicy, floral and fresh while still maintaining a dark-red-fruited character. As soon as I landed I booked a visit with Gary Mills at Jamsheed.
“The Yarra has soft light and lots of interesting slopes, volcanic soils and good rainfall, so the wines tend not to be so sunny and muscular but more elegant.”
—Luke Lambert
“Syrah is part of your wine lexicon if you grow up in Australia,” Mills told me. Yet back in 2003, when Mills founded Jamsheed, he looked to St-Joseph in France’s Rhône Valley for inspiration. “I love the wildness of the variety, the heady spice and the crazy sweet green wacky tones,” he says of the style of wine he found there, powered by fermentation with whole bunches. “I love the way that mineral soil can push a drive shaft of tautness through a palate that’s surrounded by deep fruit.”
To achieve a similar style in Australia, Mills focuses on vineyards in the higher elevations of the Yarra Valley, and ferments the grapes as whole bunches. “The higher the better in Australia,” Mills says, explaining that many of the old shiraz plots were planted in flat, low-elevation areas near water for the ease of farming. He prefers the cooler, higher sites. “One of the significant results of climate change in Australia is the early trend of harvest and the compression of vintage. Anything that can slow down the ripening process and elongate the hang time is welcome.”
On a tip from Jamsheed’s winemaker, Rhen Dodd, I headed to Luke Lambert’s winery early the next morning. Lambert was inspired to try his hand at winemaking by the wines of Cornas. He settled on the Yarra Valley for his syrah project, having tasted elegant, low-alcohol pinot noirs and cabernets from the region.
“The Yarra has soft light and lots of interesting slopes, volcanic soils and good rainfall,” he says, “so the wines tend not to be so sunny and muscular but more elegant.” Lambert sources his fruit from south-facing vineyards in the Upper Yarra: Between the coolness of the climate and the limited sun, the fruit can ripen slowly and sustain acidity at harvest.
The style—medium-weight, perfumed syrah—requires careful treatment in the cellar as well, he says. “I hate to see any amount of new oak in shiraz, whether Australian or French,” Lambert says. “It covers up all the beauty of the variety.” He relies on large old French oak foudres and ferments with whole clusters and without added yeasts, then bottles without fining or filtration. The results are wildly fragrant, frisky syrahs entirely unlike the stereotype of blockbuster Australian shiraz.
Timo Mayer is also based high in the Upper Yarra, in the remote outskirts of Healesville, at a vineyard he calls the Bloody Hill. As we stood outside his house that overlooks his vines, he told me about leaving Germany to settle in Australia, the path to his own label in 2000, and his excitement about all things whole bunch.
His first experience working with syrah was back in the 1990s when he was making wines at De Bortoli, in charge of the basic bottling. “It was the poor cousin of the Estate Syrah. It was lower in alcohol, we didn’t use any new oak on it, it got less attention in the cellar, so it was less worked—and it was all the better for it,” Mayer says. “It had Yarra Valley written all over it.”
Mayer tells me he was inspired by Lambert and Mills to make whole-cluster syrah. “What all these wines have in common is that spice, pepper, fragrance and vibrancy at modest alcohol levels,” he says. Mayer releases his wines young, hoping to let the vineyard speak for itself, with limited interference, no new oak used in aging and including whole bunches in the fermentation (about 50 percent). “I just love the perfume and savoriness this style of winemaking can bring to a wine,” he says.
Here are some fresh styles of syrah from cool sites in Victoria, most from high altitudes, most from Yarra. There’s nothing monolithic about them. Instead, their lightness allows the character of the individual sites to show through.
Yarra Valley Shiraz
Tasting Notes by Joshua Greene, W&S Australian wine critic
Innocent Bystander 2015 Yarra Valley Syrah
This is an earthy Yarra wine that’s beautiful in its informality, from the scents of horse stable and game to the high-toned mace-like scent that brings to mind Mediterranean roasted eggplant, or shawarma. It’s tight and meaty, with lasting spice. (91 points, $20; Old Bridge Cellars, Napa, CA)
Jamsheed 2015 Beechworth Warner Vineyard Syrah
Gary Mills makes this syrah from a site in the foothills of the Victorian Alps—the elevation at Beechworth is more than 1,800 feet. He works without additions: spontaneous, whole-bunch fermentations; no enzymes; no fining or filtering and minimal sulfur at bottling. So, the wine leans a little natural in its volatility, needing a good shake in a decanter to get past the pickle scents and land in meat-and-olive-tapenade spiciness. It turns fragrant with light scents of blackberries, cured meat and pepperoncini. Let it open up before serving with rabbit pappardelle. (91 points, $55; Vine Street Imports, Mount Laurel, NJ)
Luke Lambert 2013 Yarra Valley Syrah
Lambert’s syrahs are never what you might expect from Australia. They have the grace more often associated with Cornas than with anywhere in the New World. In the warmth of the 2013 vintage, this one is more Italianate—one taster compared it to Lacrima Morro d’Alba. There’s a wild, exotic fruit scent, close to red plum and pomegranate, along with a floral note of rose petals. It’s bold and luscious, firmly contoured, lasting with a sense of restraint that doesn’t diminish its cool length of flavor. (93 points, $65; Vine Street Imports, Mount Laurel, NJ)
Timo Mayer 2016 Yarra Valley Syrah
Mayer grows this wine at his Bloody Hill Vineyard, 6.4 acres of vines on a steep slope at the base of Mount Toolebewong. He uses 50 percent whole clusters in the fermentation, which seems to outline the charry edges of this syrah, capturing black mushroom and black olive flavors within a tense structure. Decant it for a wood-oven pizza topped with eggplant, sausage and olives. (92 points, $85; Vine Street Imports, Mount Laurel, NJ)
Yeringberg 2014 Yarra Valley Shiraz
A gracious, fl oral shiraz, this wine has a tension that shows in the crunch of its pomegranate fruit. It’s light, even for a Yarra Valley shiraz, focused on freshness. The tannins are rocky and firm, though the wine feels gentle, a delicate study in contrasts. (92 points, $80; Old Bridge Cellars, Napa, CA)
A recent graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, Allison Bart worked a harvest at Soter Vineyards in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, then worked in retail at Frankly Wines in NYC. Having spent six months in Melbourne in 2013, she developed an interest in Australian wines. Allison is currently the Culture & Events Manager at SevenFifty.
This story appears in the print issue
of Fall 2018.
Like what you read? Subscribe
today.
