Syrah makes kick-butt wine for food
From the chapter: Cooking up storms
The “Rhône Rangers” movement of the mid-1980s seemed to give rise to one of the strangest phases in modern California wine history: A varietal category that has been castigated nearly as much as it has been praised.
No matter. There is now a good amount of Syrah being grown and produced on the West Coast. Whether it thrills you or not, there is no getting around this fact: West Coast terroirs grow kick-butt Syrah. I mean, not just a small handful of significant Syrahs, but an entire, say-you-want-a-revolution-Sgt.-Pepper’s-Lonely-Hearts-Club bandwagon of them. Gloriously rich, complex, inspiring, soaring Syrahs—everything a wine lover, any wine lover, would want in a wine that has truly found a natural home. It’s a shame, of course, that the dramatic ascendance of these wines has met with a giant, collective yawn.
It’s often been said that the varietal’s general market indolence is due to the fact that “consumers simply don’t know what to expect” from a bottle of Syrah, according to one article filed by a Wine & Spirits Magazine correspondent. In that same article, I read:
What is Syrah... is it a spice box—peppercorns and lavender, anise and mocha? A butcher’s banquet—scents of organ meats and bacon fat and beef bones? A food fight at the jam factory—heady gobs of blueberries lobbed into the glass, textures as squishy as a pachyderm’s tush?
In fact, these questions are so imaginatively worded that it cuts directly into the heart of the matter: Syrah in America is not just an intense, multifaceted wine, especially in the hands of imaginative vignerons. It comes in a fascinating variety of styles and choices. Wait a minute: Isn’t that exactly what we love about, say, French or Italian wines, Bordeaux reds or Cabernet Sauvignons, red Burgundy or Pinot Noirs from around the world?
Since when is sensory diversity ever an issue when it comes to the great grapes of the world? We want Syrahs to be different, even unexpected, especially when grown in such a wide range of terroirs. What is the point, to put it another way, of a Côte-Rotie tasting like a Cornas, or a Sonoma Coast Syrah duplicating a Syrah grown in Santa Barbara’s Ballard Canyon or Southern Oregon’s Applegate Valley? Unpredictability is good.
Here is my assessment, based upon over 40 years of working the trenches, in markets from coast to coast: America’s Syrah specialists are doing exactly what they should be doing, turning out a full range of the grape. Personally, I think it’s not so much a varietal not meeting market expectations as a market not catching up to the high level of Syrah variations now being produced all around the world.
It took, for instance, some 20, 25 years for the market to catch up to American Pinot Noir producers. Heck, its taken over 100 years for many of the world’s markets to finally “discover” the amazing wines of Priorat, Bandol, Sicily, the Sierra Foothills, Maipo or Mendoza. When I started in the business, Châteauneuf-du-Pape was still considered among the lowest of the low—practically vins ordinaire. There was never anything “wrong” with the wines from these regions. There was always a lot more wrong about people’s perceptions⏤or more shamefully, that of the nattering nabobs of negativism among wine cognoscenti⏤when it comes to Syrah based reds grown outside the Northern Rhône.
IDEAL SYRAH FOOD MATCHES
Top-notch Syrah can do several things at once: Knock you off your proverbial feet, yet entice and seduce you with fine delineations of fruit, spice and textures—like Pinot Noir without the delicacy, or Cabernet Sauvignon without nearly as much oak-laden testosterone.
As such, the finest Syrahs make terrific food matches; but like all other great wines they have their ideal time and place. For instance, I have one well-travelled friend—a gourmet, cultural intellectual and bon vivant—who swears by Syrah as the single best wine for the cuisines of China. This is high praise, as few would argue that Chinese cuisines are probably the most complex in the world; not just because they incorporate every foodstuff in the world, but also because they tend to touch every part of the tongue while firing off every receptor in the olfactory, like well ordered cacophonies of sensations. Syrah possesses not just the complexity but also the stuffing to fit in places few other wines can.
Hence, when cooking for Syrah, some thoughts and guidelines:
Syrah is a quintessential “big red” calling for red fleshed foods—from beef and lamb to tuna, goose and game, or else fattier cuts of pork.
It pays to play up to Syrah’s spice (suggestive of black pepper and smoky incense), a complexity that is more subtle that often assumed; and this can be done with use of aromatics such as garlic and alliums, peppercorns and peppers (bells as well as chiles), cinnamon and clove, all mushrooms, mustards, ginger, bay, basil, mints, parsley, sage, rosemary, oregano, and thyme.
The often overlooked violet and floral varietal qualities of Syrah can be highlighted with the use of plum, berries and cherries (fresh or dried).
Grilling and roasting are always good ideas, but bringing out the sweetly scented berry or plum qualities of Syrah by first marinating any number of ways is also good practice. We’ve had luck with soy sauces infused with ginger, garlic, scallions, star anise, lemon grass, and even chili pastes, balanced by sweeteners like palm sugar (i.e., the Chinese or Asian-Fusion friendly elements of Syrah).
Any variation of American barbecue marinades—especially meatier beef ribs or chewy tips in vinegar (as in the Carolinas) or mustard laced sauces — will play off the flowery fruit, peppery spice (connects with restrained chili spices, often with electrical results), and underlying acidity of classically composed Syrahs.
There is enough of a sweetly fruit forward quality in top-drawer Syrah to be successful with umami-concentrated stews and braises; classically in seasoned natural stocks (especially with quatre-epices), and innovatingly in Japanese, Chinese or Korean inspired stocks.
And a few of our favorite culinary blasts from the past incorporating the grape from around the world, involving some specific wines:
Twice cooked duck and mesclun salad with confit of garlic in a Syrah reduced balsamic vinaigrette with one of J.L. Chave’s sprightly, smoky, slightly gamey and smoothly rounded Saint-Joseph.
Cracked peppercorn crusted tuna in a garlic thyme syrah syrup with a moderately tannic, black peppery perfumed Bonny Doon Syrah.
Grilled quail and wild mushroom terrine in a spicy roasted red bell pepper sauce with a round and fruit driven Qupe Central Coast Syrah.
Cassoulet of lamb, oxtail and pig’s ear with a classically hunky, musclebound Cornas by Allemand.
Australian free-range lamb chop in a wild cherry Shiraz reduction with a powerfully sculpted, sinewy, scented Penfolds Grange-Hermitage.
Hoisin marinated tenderloin of lamb in a tamarind plum ginger glaze with wasabi mash, matched by a massive yet sweetly concentrated Peter Lehmann Stonewell Shiraz.
A roasted ribeye of veal with hedgehog mushrooms and rosemary/oregano tinged mornay with a lush yet muscular, resiny herb spiced Shenandoah Valley Syrah by C.G. Di Arie.