Syrah, awarded Decanter

Syrah is a red grape variety widespread mainly in the French region of the Rhône Valley. Contrary to what was thought in the past, fabling about the name and its spicy notes, it is not a grape of oriental origin brought to Hermitage by some knights returning from the Crusades. Much more prosaically, the syrah comes from a spontaneous cross between the mondeuse blanc, an ancient variety of Savoy, and the dureza, a grape native to the Ardeche region. Today syrah is the symbolic grape of the wines of the upper Rhône Valley, in particular of the Appellation Côte-Rôtie, Hermitage, Crozes-Hermitage, Cornas is also one of the grapes used to produce the wines of the Lower Rhône region: Gigondas Vaqueyras and especially Châteauneuf-du-Pape. It is a variety that produces wines of good structure, with floral aromas, of small berries, embellished with the characteristic notes of oriental spices and black pepper. In Italy, it is cultivated with excellent results in Tuscany, both in purity in the Cortona area and in the Bolgheri area as a complementary grape to cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc and merlot in the Supertuscan blends. It is also cultivated with interesting results also in Sicily. In the rest of the world it is widespread, mainly in Australia under the name of Shiraz.