Syrah, Grenache and Mourvedre

The most unique factor in determining the taste of a wine is the grape variety from which it is made. This series looks at each of the major grape varieties and assesses wines made all over the world from that variety. The focus of the series is primarily on flavour and quality. Each volume includes background information on the grape variety and advice on the best way to buy, store and serve the wines from it. A gazetteer lists the main wines made from the variety in Europe, North and South America, Australia and New Zealand, and elsewhere. A special feature of this series is the individual ratings given for quality, price and best recent vintages. Syrah is nothing like so well known a grape variety as Cabernet Sauvignon or Pinto Noir, yet there is no doubt that it makes some of the world's greatest red wines. The aristocrats of the northern Rhone such as Hermitage, Cote Rotie and Cornas, which are made almost entirely from Syrah, have suffered ups and downs in reputation. Now they are very much back in fashion. Ten years ago, few would have believed that a single-vineyard Cote Rotie would sell for more than Chateau Petrus.
These days the best producers of Hermitage, Cornas and Cote Rotie could sell their limited production, even at the current extortionate prices, many times over. Syrah is known as Shiraz in Australia, and in the hot Barossa and Hunter Valleys it makes massively rich, ripe, long-lasting wines which are arguably as great as their more refined Rhone relations. We will surely be seeing a worldwide Syrah boom in the next decade. The other two grapes dealt with in this volume are not generally considered among the world's elite. But much-despised Grenache is responsible for 80% of Chateauneuf-du-Pape, now being appreciated as one the great French wines, as well as delicious, unpretentious reds, roses and fortified wines from France, Spain and Sardinia. Mourvedre, the star of Bandol in the south of France, is fast becoming the most fashionable grape variety of all, especially since its discovery by the Rhone Rangers of California. Giles MacDonogh provides up-to-the-minute information on its strides forward in the New World, as well as the best producers worldwide of all three grape varieties.