Que Syrah, Shiraz: From the Northern Rhône to Down Under

Class transcript:

Participants slowly working their way into the virtual classroom. We have one minute till we release the hounds. And here it is, Zoe, game face. Welcome, welcome one and all. Welcome to Sunday. Thank you for ignoring the clarion call of NFL Sunday and joining us for wine school. Nonetheless, it is a pleasure to have you all here with us. I'm going to mute you all because that for some reason didn't happen. It's not that I wouldn't love to hear from you, just too many voices in the room as it were. So I encourage you, as ever, to use the lively chat as your primary means of communication. With me as always is the lovely Zoe Nystrom who will occasionally unmute herself throughout proceedings to help us monitor the ever lively chat.

And tune in with her own tasting notes for the range of wines that we are featuring today. Today's star of the show is Sarah. Today was kind of the first day I woke up in Washington, D.C. and there was a little bit of in the air. So it felt like a harbinger of the new season, a harbinger of fall, a season of mist and mellow fruitfulness, as Keith said. And Sarah, you know, kind of embodies that for me. Sarah is a bit of a jump into a fall leaf pile of a wine. And it is a wine that kind of embodies, you know, this duality. Is it Shiraz? Is it Sarah? It is both. And it has and embraces dual identities in the old world, in the kind of northern reaches of the Rhone Valley, where it has its birthplace, and in Australia as well.

Which is, I think, you know, where it, for most consumers, is best known today under the delightfully Aussie name Shiraz. Shiraz just doesn't sound quite as good with an Aussie accent, Shiraz, you know, it really fits, you know, the people, the accent, and I apologize to any Australians I offend over the course of the following hour. Quarter-century classes were celebrating with all sorts of Shiraz, from both the Northern Rhone and from Australia itself. I have three here that I'm starting with just for the sake of our narrative. Now, we sold a two-pack featuring kind of a Aussie kind of new classic versus a more traditionalist Northern Rhone offering. So those are these two. I'm going to start in the Northern Rhone with Paul Esteve's wine from Domaine de Miquet.

And we're going to trace two of the most famous kinds of designations of origin for Syrah in the Northern Rhone and proceed from there to the Southern Hemisphere and explore the Aussies. This is a great class to kind of arm yourself with multiple glasses for. I really like to taste kind of back and forth, one wine to the other. I tend not to get quite as worked up about, you know, spoiling my palate for the sake of one wine. I think it's very illuminating to taste one against the other and, you know, worry less about, you know, moving, you know, into, you know, from one wine into a wine that follows perfectly. And I like the back and forth action of it, especially if you have multiple glasses in the offering.

I think that's a really fun way to taste and particularly fun with a grape like Syrah from regions as different as the Northern Rhone Valley of France and Australia, that are as, you know, gloriously different as they are. All right. You know, kind of tasting back and forth really illuminates the differences in the wine in a way that, you know, tasting one and then tasting the other really can't. So, without further ado, let's kick it off here. It's 4-0-4. Welcome to Lesson 25, we're flying solo today at the quarter century mark. A special welcome as ever for those of you joining us from outside the D.C. area, especially those of you joining us from the West Coast, I hope all of you are well in the midst of the historic forest fires out there.

A bit of local housekeeping first, I am very proud to announce that we are going to be doing our first in-person Tale of Goats Wine School, Wednesday, September 23rd. That will be taking place at The Lot, which is a Reveler's Hour's adjacent outdoor space. That will be an event. To benefit Mama Tutu, which is Washington D.C.'s premier prenatal social support service agency. They do a lot of work with expectant mothers in Southeast D.C., in particular they're based in Lincoln Heights. So, our first ever properly socially distanced, mind you, Tale of Goats in-person endeavor, Wednesday, September 23rd. That will happen at night, not at 4 o'clock for those of you that, you know, have day jobs that you, you know, at least have to pretend to, you know, be present for in, you know, this remote environment.

So, the evening of Wednesday, 23rd, I will reveal the subject in tomorrow's recap. And I will have a link to the site so that you can claim your tables. And the way we're doing this, it's $150 a head. Again, all proceeds will benefit Mama Tutu. And we're selling tables just to keep things easy for the sake of social distancing. So, there'll be tables: table two and tables of four. And we will sell the whole table that you will commit to. So, talk to your friends, talk to your loved ones if you're so inclined. 

Our email service has been kind of temperamental. But I will make sure that you have equal access to the recap email tomorrow for the sake of signing up for that event if you're so inclined. Very excited about it and thrilled to support an amazing agency, social service organization in Mama Tutu. Without further ado, let's talk Seurat today, K Seurat Shiraz. Whatever will be, will be. As always, we've got a bit of burst. To kick things off, and what else but a bit of Aussie verse. This comes from Judith Wright, who is one of Australia's greatest poets, greatest citizens, passed away in 2000, an amazing advocate for Australia's environmental charities and also for the indigenous people of Australia. This is called A Request to a Year.

If the year is meditating a suitable gift, I should like it to be the attitude of my great-great-grandmother, legendary devotee in the arts, who, having eight children and little opportunity for painting pictures, sat one day on a high rock beside a river in Switzerland. And from a difficult distance viewed, her second son, balanced on a small ice floe, drifted down the current toward a waterfall that struck rock bottom eighty feet below. While her second daughter, impeded no doubt by the petticoats of the day, stretched out a last hope Alpenstock, which luckily later caught him on his way. Nothing it was evident could be done. And with the artist's isolating eye, my great-great-grandmother hastily sketched the scene. The sketch survives. Prove the story by: Year.

If you have no Mother's Day present planned, reach back and bring me the firmness of her hand. A dark poem, but one that seems incredibly fitting for the current moment. And you know, I love that, you know, sense of resolute strength in spite of circumstances that poem embodies. And I think, you know, whoever you are out there, everyone had a grandmother like that. I remember my grandma Carol who sliced her foot open and refused to go to the hospital. For a full week because she didn't go to the hospital, but we could all use a little bit of that resoluteness these days. Brain Sarah channeling my inner Jerry Seinfeld. What's the deal? Is it Sarah or is it sure as it is? It is both. And it has a fascinating history.

I'm going to read to you here from Oz Clark's Grapes and Wines. Oz. Is. A very entertaining writer. And this is a reference, the rare reference work that is incredibly, you know, digestible and you could read like a narrative tone. So talking about Sarah's disputed origins, he says, it is somewhat appropriate that a grape so startlingly perfumed could come laden with legend. Were the first vines on the hill of Hermitage in the Rhone planted by St. Patrick and he made his way to the monastery of Lorenz by the sea. Were they planted in the same way? Were they planted by a returning crusader, Gaspard de Sternberg? Did the Syrah vine originate in Persia and take one of its names from the city of Shiraz?

Did it originated in Egypt and travel to the Rhone via Syracuse and Sicily gaining its name on the way? Or did it simply originate in the Northern Rhone and stay there beside before I reveal the truth, I want to expound on that Shiraz lesson because it makes a lovely story. So for those that argue for Shiraz as a legend. Shiraz is the birthplace of the grape Syrah. They point to the wine industry in ancient Persia, I was centered on Persepolis. So Persepolis is the capital of the ancient Persian empire. And there's a wine industry centered around Persepolis and Shiraz, the village is just outside of Persepolis, and the story goes that the grapes spread from its origins in and around the capital of the Persian empire and on the great Royal road made its way to the Mediterranean.

It was spread by Greeks and Phoenicians to Southern France and made its way up the Rhone Valley to the storied kind of self-facing slopes of Côte-Rotie and Hermitage. Sadly, there is not much documented truth to that particular legend, this is a classic case of the story being better than the historical truth. Okay. So let's talk a little bit about Shiraz, the kind of famous California scientist Carol Meredith who works out of UC Davis has recently uncovered within the last decade or so that Shiraz is the offspring of two grapes native to France. Those grapes are Dereza, a red varietal, and Mondeux Blanc, a white varietal. So it has a fairly, you know, kind of milk toast origin story. But it is kind of closely related with a bunch of other grapes that we know and love.

So this is a snapshot, you'll have to excuse the poor quality of this graphic, but a snapshot of Shiraz family tree. And this is something that's desperately interesting to those of us who study wine and a lot of work has been done on the lineage of these varietals recently. A lot of it done by Carol out of UC Davis. But you get a sense here that Shiraz and Beignet, which are the red and white grapes of the Northern Rhone. Of Corotis in particular, are related through the parent Mondeux Blanc, and it's thought that Mondeux Blanc itself is a grandchild of Pinot Noir. So Shiraz very distantly related to Pinot Noir as well. Shiraz most definitely has its birthplace in the Northern Rhone Valley, which incidentally is kind of like the northern edge of where it can reliably grow.

And that's significant because a lot of the great growing regions in the world, be they for Syrah or Pinot, they exist on that kind of northern precipice. You want the longest growing season you can sustain to slowly develop your fruits and make the most interesting wines, which means historically you would have a fair number of vintages in a decade that created wines that were insipid and thin. But when the weather was right, you would have the most profound expressions of these individual varietals as they grew up in their birthplaces. And much as that's the story in Burgundy with Pinot Noir, that is a story in the Northern Rhone with Syrah. That's not to say that this is a region that is new to the scene when it comes to a history of winemaking.

Well, dating back to the Roman era. The Northern Rhone was celebrated for its wines, likely from descendants of the Syrah grape. The Romans called the wine in what is now Corotis vinum picatum, picatum being the Latin for pitch, which is to say it made kind of a tarry wine. And you know that tar and roses kind of combination is one that is intrinsic and identifiable in Syrah to this day. Similarly, the hillside that is now Hermitage, the Romans associated with the village, they called Tegna, which in the modern era is Tain. The Great Gorman playing the elder was celebrating its wines, you know, the first century AD. There was a bit of a lull throughout the first millennium when, you know, the Frankish and Germanic tribes invaded what was left of the Roman Empire.

And when they came back, you know, the French and Germanic tribes invaded what was left of the Roman Empire. So, you know, it was a bit of a lull throughout the first millennium. But the church got going again by the ninth century. And by the 16th and 17th centuries, this area had established itself once more as one of the great global brands for the sake of wine making. So much so that the name Hermitage in particular became closely linked with the great Syrah, such that in a lot of regions around the world, in California, in Australia, you would say 'Hermitage' as a synonym for Syrah into, you know, the modern era. Thomas Jefferson famously visited the hill of Hermitage.

He actually, it's thought, was probably celebrating the white wines of Hermitage, which don't get the credit they deserve for being as delicious as they are. Those are based on Roussan and Marsan, grapes we have yet to cover, but, you know, we very well may at a later point in time. But the red wines gained pride. Pride of place over time in this corner of the world, largely because in good vintages on the south-facing auspicious sites, they could beef up some other more famous commercial products. So famously, the greatest wines of Bordeaux, wines like Lafite, advertised the extent to which they were based on Hermitage in the 18th, even into the 19th century. So they would advertise the Syrah in Bordeaux as a selling point. Syrah.

The Syrah was the first of a kind of a blend of wine from the late 19th century to the modern era. There's a small quantity of it in Bordeaux, but it is not considered one of the noble ingredients in that blend. But Syrah was used to put lead in the pencil, as it were, to add weight and fruit to what in Bordeaux are maritime wines. Whereas, you know, Syrah had a fuller body, more fruit, much more to offer. It was in its own day, kind of the Australian red. Red of its era to Bordeaux's, you know, more classically defined, you know, kind of a thinner, more graphitey, reedy red wine. Why then, you know, did Cabernet Sauvignon, you know, gain prominence over Syrah?

Well, sadly, that has a lot to do with the fact that the hillsides of the northern Rhône are just much harder to work than the plains of the Gironde estuary. Also, the estuary, being an estuary, makes a much easier kind of port to send wine out of than the northern Rhône before steamships, before trains. It took about two months to get wine either up the Seine, through a canal over to the Loire, and to international markets, or south down the Rhône. It wasn't an easy trip prior to steamships and railroads. But, sadly, once those things did become available, and the wine started to gain traction internationally in the mid-19th century, bolts were intervened, and killed everything for everybody, and then a couple of wars intervened, you know, such that these great vineyards, celebrated since antiquity, were really lying in waste circa, you know, 1960s, 1970s.

And you have a situation where the descendants of Jean-Louis Schaaf are playing in these discarded, wine buildings, you know, you have these great vineyards that are selling for a song, because no one wants to work the vineyards in the post-World War II period. Fortunately, that situation has changed quite a bit, and the wines have reassumed much of their international significance in accordance with their historical reputation, which brings us to our first expression of Syrah, and this is a case where I really want to, you know, kind of talk about the boyhood of the wine. Wines as they express in the glass. I think sometimes I get a little carried away with you know these historical these literary connections when it comes to the wine, and you know we don't appreciate you know the taste of the thing itself.

You know, for me to understand Syrah, you really have to drive into the glass. This first wine it is from Paul Esteve and his and his wife Christelle Bariel. They are you know acquaintances. I had a lovely opportunity to travel with them, not in France; we were in Georgia. Paul and his wife loved Georgian wine. They actually purchased Georgian clay vessels to use to make wine in their cellars. This particular wine is aged in large neutral French oak, but they are in Saint-Joseph. So Saint-Joseph is just on the other side of the Rhône from Armitage and just to orient you, we have Bienne which was the ancient Roman center of commerce in this corner of the valley and you're really at this intersection, you know coming south on a trade route from Paris, coming north from a trade route, you know originating in the Mediterranean and then you know coming west from the Alps at this crossroads and they all intersected at Bienne and it just so happened that the Romans could make great wine there and just west of Bienne, you have Côte-Rotie which is kind of the northern, you know kind of queen of the northern Rhône and then in this kind of south-facing hillside Armitage, you have the king of the region. Cornas further to the south is kind of like the, you know unruly uncle in the mix historically important but you know maybe not quite as, you know regal in its own way a little more savage.

But Saint-Joseph is this place that is kind of the king of the region. This huge green zone historically it encompassed these villages mostly just west of Armitage. The designation of origin itself has expanded to an extent that a lot of people in the region are hugely uncomfortable with and they say the the wine has been kind of watered down. But Paul and his wife; they are close to Ste-Charent, This village kind of has a lot of people that have been here for quite a while but they're kind of not used to it, off the river. And this is a wonderful encapsulation for me of what kind of old-world classic Syrah has to offer. It helps that this is a village-level wine, so it doesn't bear the imprint Saint-Joseph; it's just kind of Bon de France from younger vines, aged neutral, but it's from an exceptional vintage, 2015 and 2016 in sequence wines of a generation compared to the great 1961 vintage.

So you get these, you know, otherwise humble wines that, you know, are aging really beautifully, and this is a village-level, you know, kind of wine that punches well above its weight. Zoe, when you taste this one, you know, what sticks out to you about it? I really liked how that plummy, jammy-ness comes through, but there's still, like, so much lightness, and it still is very, very floral with, like, all of those violet, and they're, like, kind of crushed florals. But to me, it's, like, it's very beastly. I really enjoyed your notes of like it's something that you can always come back to and like be dependent upon when you just want like a very good glass of red wine Yeah there's it really stings It's beautiful I think for people that are not used to Syrah as it exists in the old world something that will be striking about it is the acid You know Syrah in this northern zone it's a pretty high-acid kind of wine It is late to flower relatively early to ripen but if you give it a little bit of acid it's going to be a pretty good wine It's got a long enough growing season It maintains acid very well and that's something that you know Paul is able to maintain in all his wines. I love the combination of ripe fruitiness and then that savory dimension. For me, you know, Syrah has this, like, black olive, you know, briny kind of vegetal streak in the old world. It's very different than, you know, the expressions you'll find in Australia. And, you know, this is the kind of wine that, you know, it's fresh. It's easy drinking. It makes, you know, you salivate.

You know, it has a lot of, you know, a lot of some weight on the palate, you know, but it's not hulking by any means. I think, you know, most people would consider this a lighter red wine. You know, I would say it's kind of like, you know, light to medium in body. There are no real tannins to speak of, but it's interesting. It's dynamic. You know, there's a pretty plurality to it. There's something more savory and earthy, you know, not dry earth, something, you know, that wet, loamy earth. It feels real. And to know Paul and his wife, Christelle, you know, it encapsulates them. You know, they are pretentious, you know, people. They don't really speak a lick of English. They smoke cigarettes like a chimney.

Christelle drunkenly entertained us all at one of Tbilisi's most amazing wine bars by launching into song for a solid 15 minutes unbroken while, you know, the din continued around her. Paul is very upset that I wouldn't sing drinking songs with them. And I had to explain that, you know, I didn't really know any good English language drinking songs, but they are irrepressible. And I think their wines are equally irrepressible. And just honest. And, you know, for me, you know, Syrah can get away from that. You know, it gets at its, like, confected, you know, jammy, obnoxious place sometimes. You know, kind of like Australians themselves, you know, a little bit of Fosters, and they're fun, but too much Fosters.

And, you know, Aussies, you know, occasionally, you know, they get a little obnoxious in the airport or, you know, at the European bar. And I think Shiraz is a bit like that. But, you know, these Northern Rhone Syrahs, you know, they're elegant. And, you know, they're of the earth. And I love, you know, there's something elemental about them to me. So this is kind of a great, you know, benchmark, as it were, for Syrah as it exists in the old world. We're going to consider now Côte-Rôtie, which is a more famous corner of the kind of larger Northern Rhone region. And I'm going to share a map of Côte-Rôtie itself. We have all sorts of maps today. Wine itself in the old world kind of is a map.

And Côte-Rôtie, and this is almost the next wine, a bit of a shocking expression, I think, of Syrah. 2014 was a much less heralded vintage. You know, you could ripen your grapes, but June and July brought a lot of hail. Fortunately, it was dry and warm enough in succeeding August and September to rescue good harvest. But, you know, ripening was much more uneven. And to top that off, your Côte-Rôtie, which literally in French comes from, you know, an older expression that means the rocky hill. And that refers to the fact that, you know, you're on a south-facing hillock, which is hugely important at this northern extreme of Syrah's available growing region. And, you know, you need to soak up all the sunlight you can.

And in the northern hemisphere, you are able to do that, you know, on these south-facing slopes because, you know, the ripening rate is so high. And so, you know, you're able to soak up all the sunlight you can. And that is determined by, you know, not necessarily the way the sun strikes a level vineyard, but if you have that aspect, you get, you know, more perpendicular sunlight, which makes for maximal ripeness. Now, here you see a wine that is leaning much more into that vegetal realm. It's less of that, you know, mature black olive and more of like a green, you know, almost savage, you know, brininess. It's impolite Syrah. And I think for people that are going to drink it, you know, they're used to, you know, this jammy, you know, great concentrate that you can get in the new world.

You know, this is a bit of a shock. Zoe, what do you think about the rotine we have here? You thought it was, I'm sorry, and it wouldn't be tailcoat wine class if we didn't forget to unmute Zoe at some point in proceedings. Zoe thought it was stunning. What stunned you about it, Bill? I just really enjoyed how that plurality and that, like, lightness really contradicted all of that savory brininess from the wine. And I think it's really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, it still has that tangy whiteness and that whiteness from those olives that are coming through, but it still has this like stew-y, fruity character. And it just is so incredibly aromatic. All right. Rob Markman Yeah.

I think this is a bit of a litmus test for those of you at home that are drinking it. You know, this is a very, you know, cerebral kind of wine. I think, it, you know, is a bit raw. It's a bit savage. Syrah has that. This is the kind of thing, for me, that I wanna, you know, eat with richer foods. You know, I want, you know, it would have none you know, tureens. I want, you know, cured meats. I want, you know, that like dense country pate with something like this. I want something, you know, that needs that, you know, bracing acidity, you know, that rich tannic structure to cut through all that richness. And to some extent, I think this wine feels incomplete without that.

It should be noted that we're on a couple of single parcels, which are within the larger Roti region. So Roti is pretty dynamic. And in the modern era, it's become very fashionable in Roche to bottle wines by these individual parcels that you see listed here. You know, La Turque being one of the most famous. And the wine merchant Guillaume was one of the first to do that to great fame. And the wines attracted fabulous scores from Robert Parker in the early 80s, who deserves a lot of credit for, you know, bringing these Northern Rhone wines, these great Northern Rhone wines, to broader attention. Now, there are those that criticize Guillaume and, you know, his, you know, kind of cohorts in Roche for throwing too much new oak at the wines.

This is a very different style. You know, in this case, you have Stéphane, you know, working with neutral oak. These are very old vines, 50 to 60 years old. He's working with a particular clone of Syrah called Serine, which has smaller berries. You know, we talk about great varietals, but there are clonal differences among the great varietals, such that, you know, you have, you know, like a family of Dachshunds. And then you have Dachshunds, you know, with kind of like, you know, different coats, you know, one Dachshund is longer than the other. One Dachshund has longer hair than the other, you know, different Dachshunds being clones. And this particular clone is noted for smaller berries and denser structure. And then you get additional structure because you're on the Côte Brune.

So Côte Brune and Côte Blonde on either side. The sides of this little tributary of the Rhône here are the two of the most famous, you know, sub-parcels in Roti. And the Brune Brown, as you might guess, has iron-heavy soils known for denser tannic wines. This sub-sub-paragraph we're working with here called Léat in Bonivier are also known for acid-driven wines. And this is a wine that's just kind of starting to come into its own. It's a little reticent, you know, it's greener, but not unenjoyably so. You know, for me, you know, again, it's not for everybody, but I think it is, you know, super instructive as kind of a different face of Syrah. Does anyone have any comments about the Roti or Paula Stebb's wine in the Ever Lively chat zone?

Yeah, there are a few notes about tar and asphalt done with that, like, beautiful rose kind of lightening everything up. Almost citrusy. I think that also has to play with, like, how high the acid is and then the tannins coming through, where it's, like, very texturally appealing as well. Yeah, but I mean, it's like that bitter citrus. It's that bitter orange. It's that grapefruit pith, you know, that you're getting. You know, it's a different level of ripeness. And then I think there's, like, this, like, black pepper, like, black-backed peppercorn thing that happens. And there is a chemical constituent in Syrah that belongs to the peppercorn family as well, it should be said. You know, the Cote Roti is really, it defines the northernmost limit of the historical, you know, the historically great Syrah, you know, kind of growing areas, you know.

So this is always going to be a more acid-driven wine. And I think that's a really instructive comparison to make when we come to the Hermitage. So Hermitage is inarguably the most famous, you know, kind of expression of Syrah in the world. It is a really small hillside given over to smaller parcels, south-facing bank of the Rhône. Yeah. And the barrels throughout the northern Rhône tend to be older. They tend to be derived from the Mosse Centrale, which is an ancient granitic metamorphic, you know, range that the Rhône kind of carved its way through toward the tail end of the last Ice Age. And, you know, the granite differs from one place to the next. So, you know, in Roti, you have the Brune, which, you know, is more mica schist and iron heavy.

And then the Cote Blanc, which has a little more limestone in it. Hermitage tend to have, like, sandier soils. But it varies a lot parcel by parcel. And this is a zone where typically the winemakers celebrate less the individual wine, and they celebrate more the art of blending. So, you know, this is a wine, the Parqueneau. It comes from a portion of Porches fruit from arguably the most historic domain in the region. Jean-Louis Shoppe dates back to 1481, encompasses over 16 generations. They briefly went away from Jean-Louis as the one and only name for a wine, the Male Progeny. But we're back to Jean-Louis after a brief generation's away. The current Jean-Louis, you know, is one of the foremost winemakers in the Northern Rhône, in France at large.

This is a wine that comes from some of the Estates' fruit, but also some partner grower fruit. And it derives from different parcels. So, you have a Du Genere, which is, you know, more kind of what you can see right here. Which is toward the eastern edge of Hermitage, and is a little less celebrated. It's flatter, you know, gives you kind of spicier wines. Pelléat, which you can see at the base of the hill here. Heavier soils, again, in this particular subzone. And then, moving west, generally the more storied areas of the Hermitage zone tend to be this kind of western half the Appalachian. But the Grippio gives you, you know, more river stones at the bottom. There is poorer soils, still, and more structure in the wine.

But all of these parcels would be vinified separately. And much of the art of creating this wine is in composing the final blend. It is about, you know, taking each of those component wines and saying, you know, this needs a little bit of that, you know, but it's missing a top note. You know, let's use something a little more floral, you know, for this particular wine. You know, this is wine, you know, it's lacking length, you know. Know, let's use, you know, you know, something that comes from a site that has a little more structure. And, and that's really what people are after ultimately with the Hermitage. And this is a very different wine. I think you get a sense of, you know, moving south within the Appalachian, you get fuller ripeness in Hermitage.

There's a suppleness to it that really was missing from the first two. There's a body that was missing from the first couple of wines. But it has, you know, length to spare, acid to spare. It also helps that, you know, comes from one of the greatest producers in the region. You know, this is not an inexpensive wine by any means, but the estate wines from Hermitage, from J.L. Schaub cost, you know, twice to three times as much. It's a small corner of France. You know, you can't really expand upon this hill. You're looking at it here, perched above Tyne. And, you know, there's no room for growth here, unlike Saint-Joseph, you know, where you can kind of expand north and south. You know, Hermitage is what it is.

And as such, once people came back to realizing its potential, realizing the greatness of the wines, the only place for the prices to go, sadly, was up. We didn't talk at all about the legend of the Hermitage itself. The name comes from a particular medieval knight who, in the 13th century, is said to have come back from the Crusades and been granted permission to establish a hermitage. So he led a life as a hermit at the top of this hill. That is not his surviving hermitage. That is a small chapel at the top of the hill dedicated to Saint Christopher, but it is hugely iconic and gives its name to this storied vineyard to this very day. And I think this is one of those wines that I would recommend to anyone who's interested in wine.

And I think this is one of those wines that stands on its own. You wouldn't have to tell anyone about it. I think you could just set it in front of somebody and, you know, let them just, you know, kind of discover for themselves, you know, exactly what makes it special. Because I think, you know, in my mind, it's pretty self-evident. You know, this combines, you know, some of that savory meatiness that you do get, you know, out of, you know, the roti in particular, and some of the approachability that you get out of the roti. And so, you know, I think it's a really, really good wine. I don't know if you can get it out of the Michet offering, but, you know, there's a layer of depth.

There's a layer of power that, you know, certainly is absent from both of those wines. And, you know, you get some of that tar that the Romans, you know, celebrated once upon a time. But, you know, you get this core fruit that, you know, is something special as well. And I love the way it combines those kind of like primary fruit characteristics, you know, with those secondary, you know, earthy, spicy, savory tones. And, you know, this is a baby, that, you know, could, you know, survive another decade intact. It still drinks like a young wine. You know, I don't think that we flipped the switch yet and moved into its mature form, you know, but I think it's hugely enjoyable as such. Zoe, when you tried this wine, you know, what was special to you about it?

It's everything I want in a wine. It has that dusty library, old pages, old leather. Like, instead of the briny juiciness of a black olive, I get more of like a salted plum situation where everything's a little bit more dehydrated, and like the sour and the stewy red fruits, whereas the Côte Rôtie was more like plummy and purple fruit dominated. So I think it's like really interesting to see the dichotomy of them side by side. It should be said that I played fast and loose with the tasting notes and I'm a little more irreverent. Zoe came up in the WSET system and actually has a diploma from the court. And, you know, I find your description more illuminating than my own very often, but that salted plum, definitely there in spades.

And I love the way you talk about, you know, just, you know, how beautifully this wine, you know, combines all the things you look for in a red. You know, it is elegant, you know, but there's power there, you know, it's fruity, but that's not the only thing that's going on. You know, it's fruity, but that's not the only thing that's going on. And to have that all in the same package, you know, from this storied, you know, French locale, I think is really special. And while we're celebrating, but you know, it doesn't come cheap, you know, as it were. How then did we go from, you know, this isolated, you know, south-facing hill in the Northern Rhône to, you know, halfway around the world, in Australia? That's a great question.

And we're going to start off our journey here with a pair of wines, one from McLaren Vale and one from the Barossa Valley. And let's close out the three wine flight with this wine from the McLaren Vale. I'm going to bring up a map of South Australia. It should be said that Australia as a continent is exceedingly hot. Most of the parts of Australia, you know, that, you know, well, it should be said most corners of Australia way too hot to make wine and way too dry to make wine. That doesn't stop them, you know, places like Murray-Darling, Riverland, Riverina, they irrigate the hell out of everything and the vines get incredibly thirsty. And water use is as big an issue there as it is in the western United States, if not more so.

These are places where the water is just. These are places where grapes have no business growing, but that's neither here nor there. There are millions and millions of dollars at stake for the winegrowers of the world that are growing grapes there. It should be said that as you get closer to the coast, though, you can dry farm and you can work in a much more sustainable manner in Australia. And the greatest growing regions are clustered in, you know, the kind of southeastern corner of the country. There are some great wines just south of Perth. They tend to be kind of cooler climate wines than most of us are used to. The Margaret River in particular makes some stunning, beautiful Syrahs. Cap Saab does really well there, as do a lot of white varietals.

But we're going to focus on the historic heart of the growing regions in Australia. They are embodied by this cluster around Adelaide in South Australia in particular. So we're looking at McLaren Vale for the sake of the Derenberg wine. This is a wine called Dead Arm. It is called Dead Arm because of a fungal illness that often affects grape vines, that you know, if you imagine a vine with two arms as it would be, you know, trained on wires, the fungal disease attacks one arm and deprives the vine of basically half of its structure. That gives a remarkable concentration to the remaining fruit. And older vines, it should be said, tend to be virus riddled. You know, the mere fact that they have a virus doesn't mean we should send them out to pasture.

If we work responsibly in the vineyard, you know, and we're careful about the spread of those, you know, viruses and that fungal illness to other plantings, we can sustain these vines in a way that they still make remarkable fruit. You know, they're not operating at full capacity, but they're more profound and interesting for it. And that's something that this particular producer celebrates. The McLaren Vale or the Vale to, you know, the hip cool kids in Australia is a very warm growing region. It is not quite as, you know, it gets very warm there, you know, maybe not quite as famously warm as the Barossa Valley, which we'll talk about in a second, which is kind of the historic heartland of the Australian growing region.

But, you know, just to taste this wine, I think you get a sense of what it's like to be a part of the world from New World for the sake of these offerings. Zoe, you equally liked the Dead Arm. What did you like about it? It tastes like the Girl Scout Cookies Thin Mints to me. You get that, like, great eucalyptus, it's so, so, so minty. Someone said that you can always tell a Shiraz when you're blind tasting because it kind of smells like a dirty koala rolling around in the dirt with some, like, eucalyptus in its mouth. I have no koala smelling experience. I feel comparatively sheltered. I want to know where the particular individual got it. I guess you can kind of, like, cradle the koalas. They let you do that.

That's not verboten. It's not like petting, you know, tigers. I think koalas are okay because they're marsupials. But at any rate, I'm curious. I want to bottle that koala smell now because it smells lovely. And I do, I like the Thin Mint note because it's different. It's not quite an Andes Mint. There's something, you know, more kind of like cakey and chocolatey about it. But, you know, this really takes that concentration that you got in the Hermitage, but really takes it in a different direction. The quality of fruit is different. So, you know, you say a wine is fruity, but, you know, is that ripe fruit? Is it overripe fruit? Is it desiccated fruit? In this case, you know, it's some of that dried fruit.

You know, it's a little less of that stewed fruit that we got out of the Hermitage, but, you know, you get into this, like, real confected territory. If you take that too far, you know, it can be kind of dumbed down in a wine. But if you do it responsibly, as is the case here, you end up with something quite profound, I think. Did folks have any other comments? I love the koala tasting note. Were there any other tasting notes or thoughts about, you know, the difference between old and new world for the folks that are, you know, tasting ahead and exploring the Barossa Valley as well? You have a lot of notes on dark cocoa. I think that's, like, really interesting to put across between the different types of Syrahs.

You have the black pepper of the Rhone Valley, which turns into dark chocolate in Syrahs. Yeah. But then also how stunning and how surprising the tannins were, instead of it being, like, super lush and velvety. Yeah, and tannins, as Syrah, you know, develops on the vine, they really soften, which is kind of counterintuitive because tannins continue to develop and polymerize. So tannins are these little building blocks and as grapes, these long chain polymers, and as grapes continue to develop, they continue to ripen on the vine, they continue to link together. You know, you might think intuitively that the longer the tannins, the more bitterly astringent they are, but once they get, you know, sufficiently long, we lose our ability to perceive them as astringent in the same way.

So the tannins in these wines coming from warmer plants are actually longer than the tannins in the Hermitage, but they kind of fall out in a way. And, you know, our taste buds are blind to them in a way that they aren't. The tannins in a cooler climate wine, and I think that softness, you know, that suppleness of texture is something that people really respond to about wines. It should be said that, you know, many of the Syrah vines in Australia are older than the vines in the Northern Rhone. So, the Northern Rhône, you know, we went through this kind of sad story of France after, you know, the interwar period, you know, the, you know, kind of struggling to sustain, you know, this pastoral way of life in regions like the Rhône after World War II, you know, you lost a lot of the old vine material in France.

In Australia, they managed to keep it. So, you know, I wager, you know, the vines for the Dead Arm are probably older than the vines for the Hermitage that we were just drinking. And, you know, that definite flavor, that concentration is down to some of that vine age. The Buggalugs, you know, a seemingly entry-level wine, Buggalugs is, I've been told, is Aussie sign for mate or friend. From Rhôde turned winemaker Tim Smith. The Buggalugs, you know, has component parts that are over 100 years old from the Barossa Valley. But, you know, what's fascinating to me is you have this long history of winemaking in Australia and it's very old vine plant material, but it's coupled with this modern sense of innovation. So for the sake of the Derenberg, this is what you're looking at in the cellar.

So they have this, you know, bizarro Cubist winery. The winery is called the Derenberg. The winery itself was established in 1912 by a teetotaler, ironically, who used winnings from the track to purchase the land, but his ancestors developed the winery thereafter and they built this preposterous tasting room amongst the vines in the McLaren Vale. The current proprietor is a bloke named Chester Osborne and I feel like Chester kind of embodies, you know, the stereotype of an irreverent Aussie. He is called the Willy Wonka of the Australian wine scene. That is Chester in full makeup with the winery in the background. You know, somewhat ironically, Chester has really worked against a lot of more modern interventions. So, you know, this dead arm, which is fermented with a screw cap, you know, this is a, you know, at least a $50 bottle in a wine store, probably cost more, but, you know, it's a screw cap because the Aussies are very forward thinking and scientific.

Wine with screw cap can age beautifully. It's actually more consistent and less oxygen transmissive than cork. I don't think people fully realize that. So in its own way, it ages more consistently than wines under cork, and Aussies very rarely, if ever, will use any cork in their wines; part of that because too they developed this technology in the modern era. But this particular bloke, Chester Osborne, who, you know, looks like a cartoon – Chester, it should be said, has moved to a lot of very wonderfully old-fashioned techniques. So, Chester, not only does he ferment using native yeast, but he also stomps his grapes by foot for all of these wines and, you know, judiciously applies oak, much more judiciously than his companions. All the wines we're tasting throughout Australia see some new and old oak, it's a combination thereof.

The new oak in a lot of these wines kind of softens the tannic structure in the wines initially. And the new oak in a lot of these wines kind of softens the tannic structure in the wines initially. And I think Syrah with judicious, you know, kind of applications of new oak really sings in these wines. Tim Smith, he's not quite as colorful as Chester, but he is equally a character. He started his life as, essentially, a roadie. And then I was employed with one of Australia's foremost big brands, Yoluma, which is established in the Barossa Valley, which we haven't touched on yet. So, the Barossa itself is just north of the the Vale, as it were. The Vale, and it's kind of more like, you know, a little more like a new money zone.

The Barossa, the historic heart. So, the Barossa would be like the Central Valley to McLaren Vale's Napa, as it were. You're just outside of Adelaide. Adelaide has one of the foremost universities for winemaking in the world, on par with Montpellier, Geisenheim, UC Davis, you name it. And the Barossa is exceedingly hot, but the home of the most historically famous wineries in Australia. Vines planted there as early as the 1850s. You know, in terms of the trajectory of the Aussie wine scene, James Busby is credited for introducing Syrah cuttings from Hermitage to the Barossa to South Africa. And so, you know, it's a very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, initially Victoria, actually, was the historic home further south, closer to Melbourne of the industry, but it quickly became entrenched in the Barossa.

So the most storied brands, Penfolds, Yolumba, they are established in Barossa. That's not to say that all the grapes come from the Barossa. The Aussies are comfortable with this notion of pan-Australian blends, where, you know, you're sourcing some fruit from one place and fruit from another, you know, kind of like a maximalist version of what they do on a small scale side in Hermitage. But it should be said that further digging has established that James Busby, who gets credit for introducing grapes in 1833, was actually trumped by a bloke named John MacArthur, who introduced grapes as early as the 18-teens into the 20s. He went to the most famous vineyards in France after Napoleon met his comeuppance in 1815. And he wanted to establish Australia as a source of wine for the Brits.

And he did that very successfully into the 19th century. It just so happened that what the Brits wanted to drink was not what we would, you know, consider palatable now. The Aussies into the post-World War II period were making fortified wine, essentially, you know, port, sweeter wines. And, you know, it should be said that American winos were drinking a lot of these wines from California in the inner, post-World War II era as well. The global palate just tended to gravitate toward wines that were higher in alcohol and sweeter. The Aussie wine scene didn't really come around until the 70s and 80s, once they moved more toward, you know, kind of a drier paradigm. But luckily, they managed to save all of these historic vineyards, which we are now celebrating for the sake of the Dead Arm and the Barossa Valley offering.

Zoe, tasting the bugalugs. You know, what's your favorite? What stuck out to you about that particular wine as Tim Smith, you know, has ensconced it? You thought it was what, Zoe? Sorry, unmute yourself, as it were. Always, always. Pulling from the chats, that the Cote Roti actually tasted more Australian than this did, and that it had more of those, like, savory, earthier flavors coming through. I thought it was still very juicy, but I was surprised in that, like, herbaceous, loose leaf, black tea. Yeah. For me, you know, we are moving into, you know, a kind of a flavor profile that I occasionally struggle with because, you know, we're into, like, fruit leather. We're getting into fruit leather territory here. So, you know, there's something decidedly perceptually sweet about this wine.

And, you know, it is ostensibly illegal, you know, both in Australia and the States to water a wine back. But very often, you know, you'll see the kind of more cynical winemakers, you know, just allow a little water to come back in the mix after they harvested raisins for a dry wine. And, you know, there's something raisinated and confected about this wine. And, you know, I think there's an interesting, you know, kind of case study between the two of these. So, I love the way the Derenberg pulls that off. So, you know, you have the dried fruit quality in the Derenberg, but it's coupled with this, like, minty herbal, you know, leaf that I find, you know, kind of, you know, makes the wine more dynamic and interesting.

You know, the bug logs, you know, it just leans into that dried fruit for its own sake in a way that, like, for me, you know, not quite as enjoyable. Now, what it does well is it maintains acid. So, it's not a wine that falls flat on its face. And that's, you know, can be really hard to do in a region as warm as the Barossa. And I think you get a sense of just how warm it is. You know, these are degree growing days. And it's kind of cool because as you go, you know, from the coast inland, so this is the Barossa Valley region and then Eden Valley. And the Eden Valley, which is famous for threesling, but has a lot of old Syrah plantings, sits at elevation.

So, you know, you get into cooler climates inland in Australia. And, you know, it's not like California. You don't have a cooling influence. I mean, you have some cooling influence, it should be said, but it's not like the currents, you know, the Humboldt Current and the California Current that sweep up the western coast of the United States. You know, there's less of that dramatic diurnal shift, I mean, you know, the nights are cool, but they're not quite as cool as they are in some of the great growing regions in the old world. And in California, you don't get that dramatic, you know, swing. You know, you get, you know, kind of more consistency and, you know, just a lot more ripeness. And that's what people love about these wines.

But, you know, occasionally, personally, I struggle with, you know, in these wines. And, you know, I, you know, would much rather for the same price, you know, drink, you know, the, maybe, you know, the, you know, you know, the cat than the buccalage. But, you know, it should be said that, you know, these are both really fateful, you know, kind of representations of place, you know, and there is nothing intrinsically wrong about liking this, you know, better than the pulse wine. You know, you know, there is, you know, I think something intrinsically wrong about, you know, liking a mass marketed, you know, thing that, you know, relies on environmentally unsustainable practices to sustain it. And a lot of people, you know, like Yellowtail, you know, that are irrigated as heavily as they are, shipped around the world the way they are, you know, you know, they're, you know, they feel for me, you know, like commercial products that, you know, will eventually become unsustainable.

But, you know, this is a wine that reflects a sense of place, you know, it's not, you know, this wine that wouldn't, you know, exist without, you know, our intervention in the form of water, you know, and, you know, there's an honesty to it that way. It's just kind of a different face, the same grape. And the miracle of seraphim is that, you know, it embodies both in some way. And I'm going to close things out for the sake of our tasting with a pair of wines from, you know, different corners of Australia that kind of play against type. So, you know, Australia is a huge continent. It is a continent. It is about as large as the continental United States.

So, inasmuch as we're making, you know, these gross overgeneralizations about wine that comes off from Australia, it's important to note that, you know, there are, you know, Australia's within Australia. You know, there are so many, you know, kind of subtle, you know, variations. I really like this map of the continental Australia because, you know, it gives a sense of these different, you know, climate zones within Australia. And there's a lot of desert there. So we've got, you know, not only, I feel like if they just said desert, it would have gotten too monotonous. So this is just something to kind of, you know, take a look at and you see what the difference is. And then you can see, you know, some of the differences between the Sahara and the Sonoran deserts.

I'm guessing the Sahara is hotter. You know, the red would seem to indicate as much, you know. Sadly, Australia is getting even hotter. But you see, you know, closer to, you know, the southern edge of the continent. You know, you get these more Mediterranean climates. You get, you know, southern California, on one hand, Baja California, San Francisco Bay, Central Italy, Buenos Aires, etc. And those are your major wine growing regions in Australia. And, you know, they're not monolithic. You know, they are equally as dynamic as California is for the sake of our wines. And the two wines that we're going to be tasting here come from a couple other regions, the Clare Valley and Adelaide Hills, which are both kind of like the new hotnesses.

So, you have the Clare Valley, and you can see it is centered, you know, as you might imagine, around the village of Clare. But you are both further north, which, you know, would put you closer to the equator and ostensibly warmer in the southern hemisphere. But you are saved by the fact that you're at elevation in the Clare Valley. So it is even cooler than the Eden Valley. And Jim Berry is an icon. He and his wife established their winery in the 50's. They are Riesling royalty. They're, you know, Austrians, winemaking royalty. Sadly, Jim has shuffled off more to Coyle, but his children and grandchildren continue to preserve his tradition to this day. And this is a single vineyard wine, older plantings that date back to the 70s and 80s.

And this has some of the purity of the Northern Rhone offerings, you know, for those of you who bought enough of the wines and to make those comparisons. But there's this like juiciness of fruit, this snappiness, this ripeness of fruit that distinguishes it, I think, you know, from something that classically would come from the Old World. So, you know, it's brighter, it's lighter, you know, but by the same token, it still feels Aussie in a fun way. And then the Adelaide Hills. So you're just south of the Barossa, but again at elevation, very close to Adelaide. Adelaide Hills being the center of kind of like the hipster Somme natural wine scene in, you know, Australia. So if you want to know what your Williamsburg, you know, wine bar Somme is pouring from Australia, it's going to be from the Adelaide Hills.

You know, there are hipster wine bars in Melbourne, in Sydney, pouring juice from the Adelaide Hills. And this comes from a collaboration between a local grower and a local Sommelier character, actually Michael Hall Smith, who's a master of wine. Master of wine being the English equivalent of the kind of master Sommelier definition we give on this side of the pond. In its own way, actually more rigorous because you have to write a dissertation in the Master of Wine system. But a younger winery. And I love the Sean Smith. It feels like this wonderful halfway house for me between more of those overripe styles and more of those elegant styles. It has a more pervasive New Oak influence, I think, than any of the other Aussie Shiraz that we've tasted.

But it wears it really, really fucking well. So, you know, it tastes very much like a wine from a warmer growing region. But again, it does what I think, you know, Dead Arm does well in the sense that, you know, that, you know, warming influence is mitigated by a certain freshness and elegance. That, you know, for me is always the hallmark of winemaking done well. So, for the folks at home, do they have any comments, you know, for better or worse about, you know, these Australian Shiraz's playing against type and maybe hopefully, you know, working against, you know, the stereotypes that people have of Australian wines? I thought it was interesting that with the Tim Smith Bug-a-Lugs that there really was, Christian said, with some of the Shiraz's that he's actually tasting to call you out.

This like abandoned department store JCPenney situation, but also like some animal pelts, whereas I think that both the Jim Berry and the Sean Smith are much more approachable and much more clean. We have that the Sean Smith has a little bit more of that like Pinot funky lightness to it. I think that particularly with the Sean Smith, you can get that like whole cluster and that semi-carbonic just jumps out of the glass and it is very, very much on that like brighter fruit. I think that whole cluster thing is a particularly student observation there, Zoe. So, for those of you playing along at home who aren't familiar with the notion of whole cluster, obviously, you know, grapes come to us on stems.

You know, typically in a modern context, winemakers would de-stem that fruit because the stems, you know, which historically would have gone into the mix in a lot of red wines just because, you know, who wants to go through the trouble of de-stemming shit by hand, you know, historically. You know, they only have to offer, you know, a stringency, greenness, pepperiness, and if you're not careful about how you throw them into the mix, you can get something that seems unnecessarily harshly stringent and green. You know, if you do your work right, you get something that's much more dynamic and interesting. And for me, that has this like resinous sappy kind of tonality and almost like, you know, sappy, like weed dispensary, like sappy; you know. It's got that, you know, real, you know, yeah.

I mean, it's like the, you know, the inside of a hash pipe, you know, for lack of a better, you know, it is. There's this like sappiness that you get from stems that are ripe not stems that are, you know, green. Um, but you know it just like adds this extra element this you know je ne sais quoi in the French sense and you know for me I think that's something that Sean Smith has in spades um, you know. It feels like a dynamic, uh, multi-faceted wine, um, and I think a lot of that is about you know the inclusion of some stems, um, and you know it's not the case that you know as a winemaker you make the decision you know yay stems, booze stems, um, you know.

Typically, you know, you are parcel by parcel deciding, uh, people talk about the lignification of stems, are they you know brown, are they fully ripe stems or are they green stems, and usually the stems are like one of the last things to ripen on a cluster, um, and you know people talk. about good stems in wine or bad stems in a wine and we'll talk about you know individual varietals effectively ripening their stems and others not and site by site they'll talk about that a lot too or you know wanting you know you know uh maybe like you know with salt you know just a kiss of the stems you know they want to sulfate the stems, you know, but they don't want, you know, to, you know, you know, fully preserve the stems, and, you know, in the sense of, you know, throwing them all in the mix.

So, you know, but for me, I love with stem inclusion, Syrah with stem inclusion, even, you know, Capronc and Cap Saab, which can get really green, and you get this, like, pyrazine, you know, a convention that a lot of people don't like, but I love stems in wine. They also tend to, they can have a lot of potassium in the mix. They tend to kind of, like, dampen some of the pH in a wine. They'll strip color out of a wine in a way that freaks some people out, you know, but I tend not to worry about color in wine, you know. It can be instructed, the color of a wine. Syrah is actually famously a grape that is added to blends to give color in a wine,

and to the extent that, you know, winemakers would use, in France, Hermitage as a bird, Hermitage, like, they would, you know, bulk up a wine's color and body, you know, with Syrah, and then there are a lot of grapes around the world that are used that way for that reason, but, you know, you know, color, you know, evolves and is transient, and, you know, I think you get the most haunting, you know, extra, you know, layer of depth when you add the stems to the mix. You know, it's not always a set of flavors that people gravitate to, but you know, it's something I really love, but you know, I think the Jim Barry wine, it's something a little, you know, simpler, you know, it's just something, you know, a little more linear, but it's enjoyable as such.

It's a lighter expression. I think you would guess, you know, if I was tasting this wine, I wouldn't guess that it's, you know, sitting at 14% alcohol, and that's a testament to the winemaking, you know. You know, a wine shouldn't taste alcoholic, you know. All of those components should be integrated in a really seamless way. You know, that makes the, you know, some of the parts, you know, fluid and well integrated, and I think that's something that, you know, the Clare Valley wine, you know, really has in spades. Any other thoughts, though, from the commentariat? Yeah, is everything 100% Syrah? I know that the Cote Roti is, which is unique, but I just want to know if you know something that I don't know if anything's like that. Yeah, they are.

So, there is a tradition in both Roti and in Emmerich of adding white grapes to the mix, and the Aussies have done that. They've embraced that. So, classically in Roti, you can add a portion, up to 20% actually, preposterous, a Viognier to the mix, and the Viognier does a few things. It heightens the aromatics, it softens the tannins, and it gives more suppleness of texture in the lines, and a lot of producers in Australia have leaned into that and followed suit. I will say that a lot of the more quality-conscious producers in both Roti and Emmeritage, and Emmeriage, you don't use Viognier. In Emmeritage, you're allowed to use Marsan and Roussan to the same ends. But more quality-conscious producers are just running with Syrah as a solo varietal. None of these are co-permanents.

These are all wines that are 100% varietal-driven Syrahs, which is not to say that you can't make a really profound wine by adding a white grape to the mix. I think people think and really almost think that it's kind of like Catholic terms about, you know, God forbid, adding a white to a red grape, but like it can, in a lot of, you know, instances, just make for a more dynamic, interesting wine. But these just happen to all be single varietal Syrah. But, you know, that blending is something that happens across both continents. I really like Christian's abandoned department store, you know, there's something soulless about that image, you know, that I think really applies to a lot of commercially available wines.

You know, and to the extent that I want everyone to feel comfortable, you know, you know, drinking anything that you see fit. So, you know, occasionally, you know, people enjoy a Diet Coke, you know, Diet Coke is a chemical shitstorm. That doesn't mean that, you know, we shouldn't enjoy the chemical shitstorm that Diet Coke is, you know, just do it in moderation and understand it for what it is. You know, wine is the same way, you know, if you want to drink, you know, commercially, you know, made wine, you know, do so, just don't make it the only thing you drink, because, you know, those are the empty department stores, those are the dead malls of the wine world.

And, you know, in as much as we are what we read, you know, we are what we drink, and, you know, what you value and what you pay for, and, you know, what you subsidize in the wine world, you know, speaks to the kind of world that we want to make. And, you know, in as much as, you know, we're featuring wines that appeal to, you know, a variety of different flavor profiles, you know, these are, you know, wines that, you know, people, including the Bugalugs who like a big, dense, jammy wine, you know, I think they could be into that, you know, whereas, you know, the Rudi is like, you know, breezily vegetal and challenging. And, you know, the Miquette is like, you know, classically, you know, kind of French bistro.

But they are all agricultural products in a really, you know, kind of profound way that I think is important to celebrate, regardless of what you're of what you're drinking. So, you know, there are a lot of, you know, expressions, ultimately, but, you know, there are certainly like, more soulful ways to operate more environmentally sustainable ways, you know, to operate and, you know, without fail, you know, that is something that we try to live into, you know, for the sake of our class and something that I really want, you know, drinkers to think more about, you know, I don't want to shame anyone for liking a commercial product, there's nothing wrong with that. But it is really important to be mindful of how wine comes to the table.

And, you know, in Australia, much of their viticulture would not be possible without irrigation. And, you know, that can seem, you know, relatively benign. But, you know, as the world warms, it gets a lot less benign and water gets a lot more precious. And Australia is at the front edge of climate change problems. The fires they're experiencing out west now, Australia has dealt with those many times over. And that's because it is getting drier and it's getting hotter throughout Australia. Much as it's getting drier and hotter, much, you know, throughout the West, Western United States; making something even as, you know, resistant as, you know, grape wine will become problematic in parts of Australia. And I don't think that means that we find new and different ways of making wine in places that don't have any business making wine.

I think that means that we lean into those places where, you know, winemaking is possible in a more sustainable kind of, you know, style. There was actually a really good question about if bush vines are more drought-resistant, particularly in Australia. And if Australia certainly has a future past 20 years from now. Those are both great, great questions, though. So I actually pulled up, I anticipated this question because I think it's really prescient when it comes to Australian winemaking. I fucking love Australian people. They are drinkers. I mean, so we're making gross natural, like, we're making gross generalizations about You know, dynamic populations, Australia, like the United States is a nation of immigrants. I worked at a Greek restaurant, one of the, you know, one of the relatives of the owner lived in Perth and spoke Greek and not a lick of English.

Australia is like that, you know, as much as the United States is like that. So I don’t want to make overarching generalizations, but I will say the Aussies I’ve encountered. I’ve enjoyed a lot, especially the Aussie winemakers. I think there’s just like London. I think there’s just like a fundamental sense of absurdity being from Australia, like Americans, you know, we have this like heliocentric, you know, we’re the center of the world bullshit ism about ourselves. It's impossible to pretend that you're at the center of the world in Australia, like it's a preposterous place, you know, marsupials, like, you know, Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, you know, it's impossible to imagine that you exist at the center of the universe, you know, being born in and of Australia. And I think that's good.

There's like an absurd sense of humor there. They're drinkers. They're just fun people, you know, the Aussies I've come in contact with. And actually, you know, I find that they're very forward thinking. It is, you know, the poem we read comes from a great Australian environmentalist. These are problems that the Aussies are at the forefront of addressing, but they're problems that in terms of, you know, the specific set of natural conditions that they have been subjected to. They're being forced into. So this is forest fire danger index throughout Australia, you know, the most populous parts of the country are clustered around, you know, the greater danger. And that's because it's getting hotter and drier in these places as the world warms, you know, and and that's, you know, there's great tragedy there.

And, you know, Aussies are, you know, awake to the fact that, you know, in 100 years time. A lot of the places they make wine now, you know, they won't be able to grow anything in, and I think they are very aware of that. What you see is in Australia, people are going to Tasmania. A lot of the more forward-thinking growers in Barossa are buying land in Tasmania. They're moving south; they're moving up. You know, they're doing a lot of the same things that people in other regions are doing. I just think that, sadly in Australia, there is a coming to terms with, you know, the fact that their commercial wine-making industry, you know, might not be sustainable for the sake of irrigation going going forward.

You know, I'm sure that they'll, you know, just because the money involved, they'll, you know, bleed every last cent out of that dry rock. But, you know, that is the truth of it. Much as it's the truth, sadly, throughout central California, much as it's the truth, throughout large swaths of the central Mediterranean. So, you know, we are going to move increasingly North and south away from the equator when it comes to the world's great growing regions. People are thinking about planting more drought-tolerant grapes, it changes what grapes you plant. So Syrah is a famously drought-resistant grape, but it is not the most drought-resistant grape. It is not Mavedra. It is not, you know, Tannat. It is not Petite Syrah, actually. It's more drought resistant, you know. So, you know, it will change what people plant.

It will change where people grow. And I think the Aussie, the, you know, no country is a monolith. You have, you know, irresponsible corporate actors that will act irresponsibly to make a buck. But I think, you know, across the sector, Aussies are much more forward-thinking than people in a lot of other wine regions about, you know, how they will combat global climate change. And a big part of that is because it's been forced upon them because of where they are. Because, you know, Australia is experiencing the effects of climate change a lot faster than, than other parts of the globe, other major, you know, growing regions for better or worse. That being said, they also have led a lot of the industry in terms of technology, technological advances due to the fact that, like, which population is actually picking these grapes, who's doing most of the manual labor there?

I don't know, because they don't, like, there isn't a lot of manual labor there. Like they're, you know, there aren't a lot of people to do the hard work on the ground that needs to be done in Australia. And so a lot of the vineyard work, you know, in America, in the old world, that is mechanized, that, that is, you know, done by hand. In Australia, it's mechanized. And I don't think people fully understand the extent to which Aussies are responsible for, you know, really amazing changes in viticultural practices throughout the world in terms of, you know, making wine at scale, you know, in a clean, you know, kind of profitable kind of way. Like Aussies drove like they drove that, you know, they made that happen and part of that too, because that, you know, they could leave Australia and be in the northern hemisphere during harvest and not miss anything at home.

And so, like the original flying winemakers were Australian. And, you know, they deserve a ton of credit for innovation throughout the sector and it's kind of fascinating because you know now in Australia, but people are moving away from that. People are moving back, you know, toward more elegant, you know, lower ABV styles of wine and more traditional practices. And, you know, that happens in any sector, but, you know, in wine right now, you know, I think blessedly that's the moment we're in where people, you know, are moving away from the excesses of the 90s and the aughts when it comes to pursuing ripeness and, you know, chasing elegance. And, you know, there are Jacobins there, too. There are people moving too far in that direction, and there are people embracing sloppy winemaking in the name of natural wine.

And that's equally annoying, you know, prima facie. But, you know, the Aussies deserve a lot of credit for, you know, wine innovation globally, not just locally. I have a question about how Syrah could possibly, I mean, to age more in the Rhone Valley. And if you think that there is, particularly with things that are as tight as Hermitage and Cortis, if you should lay them down for a few years before opening? Yeah, I mean, classically, those are wines that you just, like, wouldn't drink in their, especially from the most privileged sites. So, you know, I think historically, you know, especially in, you know, on the continent in France, you know, in, you know, the most hallowed winemaking region. People, they, for, you know, particular storied parcels, just had a sense of, you know, not drinking wine until it was ready.

You know, so you just wouldn't think about drinking, you know, Hermitage or Roti, you know, before it had aged at least 10 years, you know. And that was, you know, just kind of part of, you know, local wisdom. You know, you would drink other things. You know, you would drink, you know, wine from, you know, the high, like, like the plains, you know, the plateau, you know, above that choice hill. But, like, it was just like a, it was like a warning label. It was like, you know, the office fridge with your sandwich or your takeout. Like, you just, like, you wouldn't, you wouldn't touch it. And if someone did touch it, like, you know, the person who was, you know, responsible for it would get really pissed off that you ate their, like, lamain.

Like, you know, it was just part of the culture. You know, I think people don't drink that wine. People don't drink wine that way anymore. You know, people are much more want to drink wine as youth. And then it's also very expensive to hold back wine that way. And that has informed the way that people make wine in these regions. You know, that has, you know, meant that people in regions like Rotti and Amitaj where historically the wines needed, you know, five years, ten years to become enjoyable. It means that they're making wine in a more plush style. It means that they're including less stems. It means that they're harvesting later. You know, it means that maybe they're throwing more new oak at things to soften the tannins.

You know, so it changes the wines. It changes the culture, you know, sometimes for better or worse. And in regions like Barolo in particular, you know, people lament the fact that, you know, you know, people don't age the wines the way they once used to. And, you know, that is a matter of fashion. You know, there's nothing inherently right or wrong about that. You know, my prejudice is, you know. The old way, you know, I think there's a nobility to the patience entailed in, you know, making wine that, you know, isn't ready for, you know, a decade or more. It is closed off. And I think particularly, like, we saw that with the Roti. I'd be really curious to see how that wine ages. That's a very temperamental wine.

It reminds me a lot, actually, for those of you that participated and drank the Mouscadet we had from the 90s. It reminds me a lot of that. The 1997 in Lebanon was an uneven vintage. And equally, 2014 in Roti was an uneven vintage. And their wines, they're like moody adolescents. You know, they just kind of need coddling. And bottle by bottle, they vary. And, you know, sometimes they surprise. Sometimes there's like a, you know, 30-minute window where they're, you know, amazing. And then the next 30 minutes is, you know, unspectacular. And then, you know, they come back. They come into another place. And it's impossible to predict that. You just kind of live with it and, you know, try to appreciate it and understand it. And, you know, for me, that's what makes wine enjoyable.

And I think, you know, people with wine, you know, especially when they first start drinking it, they're really plugged into this notion of experiencing the best that a region has to offer, a grape has to offer, a producer has to offer, whatever. And I think the more you drink, you know, the more you just want to understand and be along for the ride. And I was listening to Jean-Louis, the current Jean-Louis Schwab. Like, it's like the, like, I don't know, it's like the 20th fucking Jean-Louis in a line. And he actually says when the family talks in correspondence, they don't talk about Jean-Louis. They just talk about the number. They talk about, you know, 15 or 14 or 15 or whatever. That's how they refer to them, which is, you know, maddening and horrifying.

But it speaks to me. Actually, for those of you playing along at home, I am the fourth in a line of William Jensen's. But I am not the fourth because my mom had had enough of the numbers and gave me a different middle name. But, you know, as someone that, you know, was a long, you know, in a long line of Bills and Williams, you know, I appreciate the need for, you know, changing the recipe, you know, as it were. But, you know, that, you know, traditional modality. I think there's there's poetry there. And, but, you know, the people that live with these wines that live with them, that that make them. They just want to understand things.

They want to, you know, they're they're less invested in the best, the greatest, you know, and they're more, you know, engaged in the rhythm of life and the journey of it all. And I think that's just a more important way to understand wine and, you know, life. Etc. So we could have more questions, but I want to toast at any rate to close things out. We're well past our, you know, usual cutoff. Thank you for the tasting notes, Zoe, particularly illuminating. You know, we'll have you doing all the tasting notes from henceforth. But anyway, I'm drinking the Chook sparkling Shiraz. We are, as always, alone together. Thank you so much for joining us, guys. So. Well, that's weird. That tastes like an anti-stress. So that is not a thin mint.

That is definitely an anti-stress. And I actually want, I want really spicy Thai food with that. It's kind of off dry. Usually, Aussie sparkling Shiraz is notoriously kind of off dry. But this is, it is for, this is one of Zoe's favorite wine descriptions. It's definitely slutty, a little wine, but in a fun way. So any other questions we get to address though? Yeah. How do you think that song reminds you of autumn? That's a really fun question. It's not all songs, so this doesn't remind me of autumn. This reminds me of, I don't know. It's like this is forward in a way, that's definitely not autumn. It, so the savoriness of it. I have these really fond memories as a kid growing up in suburban DC of jumping into the pool.

So I have all these really fun memories as a kid growing up in suburban DC of jumping into the pool. files you know this would be this great entertainment this is before we had the handheld devices and you know we could you know virtually jump into leak files but um we actually jumped into leak files and like something of that like um you know a leak pile wet leak pile will start to you know desiccate ferment you really fast and you know there's a earthiness a mustiness that comes with that and uh the like classic old old world syrah reminds me of that and um in like a really visceral way that i can't fully explain because you know the sense of smell it short circuits the cerebral cortex it goes straight to the emotional centers of the brain so you know these are not rational memories these are just like visceral uh sensations Um, uh, in a really awesome way, uh, but I always get that out of Syrah; I get that out of other wines too, like old school Rioja, like um, uh, you know, which were actually, uh, just spoiler alert that'll be our next lesson, but, like um i really like that like old school like lopez area style rioja gives me that too like that anything a lot like ages long enough you know can can be in that territory but something about syrah in particular um it just it just feels like that um you know there's actually another great poem that i posted um in one of our in one of our mailers they talked about it as this like um there's the the poem is about uh tomatoes in summer but um uh rotting tomatoes is in this like um um like whiskey like uh on the like whiskey on the floor there's just like uh like the notion of fermentation like and he's both like death and decay and life you know together and that yin and the yang things decaying but living at the same time in that like compost heap like you know buddhist center of life that farming is all about like there's there's poetry there i i love that moment and i think like syrah for whatever reason it's like a very good like old school syrah maybe not aussie syrah doesn't do that for me but like um like the the northern run syrah does that excellent um i have uh just a request to never show us what chester osborne looks like ever again yeah yeah i think that's i think that's fair i found it equally shocking um it wasn't so much the um the outfit it was the makeup with the outfit it was like the old uh because he has like the old elizabethan um he has the old elizabethan like makeup on top of um the um you know so he's committed to the costume uh but he is equally committed to um like the rouge um on cheeks in a way that is uh particularly horrifying um and then you to add to it uh the floppy blonde locks um i fear that i myself am entering uh chester osborne's um territory with the With the hair if it gets long enough, but um, I will not you look like James Blunt's I will not be going as Willy Wonka and or Chester Osborne for Halloween, if you're not um, yeah.

I just think that they're probably on the same crazy train together, not to mention we have a design professional now that says that the winery behind them looks like a Rubik's uh cube piece of, they actually call that uh, it's called the Rubik's Cube. Um, there so there's a lot of I mean, I've found architecture hugely fascinating, there's a lot of like really amazing modernist architecture in wine um, uh, in Rioja in particular, but in other corners of the globe. Um, that is like for me like one of the worst like-like architectures does well for me when it either when it feels like it's either kind of dynamically um interposed in a landscape or you know dramatically juxtaposed with it, that one does neither, it's just kind of like, you know an alien that was sitting in a pavilion that kind of got its Rubik's Cube and it, like, you know happened to descend amongst Shiraz vines in McLaren Vale.

Um, well I guess just to wrap it up now that um we got our last call um will you be using a bullhorn to teach my class on Wednesday? Ah, that's a great question; I don't know how I'm gonna do that, I will say Zoe, that Uh, for those who know me, I don't need a bullhorn; um, I used to work, or I worked briefly on the Hill. I really hated it on the House side; the offices on the House side are really small. And I was just doing grunt work and answering phones and stuff. And one of the, like, the LA legislative systems, like got upset at the way I was answering the phone because it was kind of a broadcast throughout the office.

So they could tell that I was on the phone, like, you know, a room away and the offices are not big and describe my voice as operatic, trying to put a good spin on it, but, you know, essentially telling me to, you know, pipe down. So I'm fully confident that every corner of the lot and every live participant will be able to hear me. So, fear not. And really excited to do this live and in person for you for you all in as much as, you know, this virtual platform has been, you know, lovely. It's no substitute for, you know, seeing you all live and in the flesh and yeah. I'm sorry for those of you that won't be able to join some people, but for those of you that are, look forward to it and, you know, keep your eyes glued to your inbox tomorrow and hopefully we'll raise a good deal of money for, for a worthwhile cause. So cheers to you all. Enjoy the rest of your Sunday. F**k football. Yay, Ozzy Shiraz and wine and life in general.