Wine Chronicles: Syrah and Pinot Noir A Blend Worth Testing

Summary: Today Dan Berger explores the idea of blending syrah and pinot noir, using AI and research to trace examples in both Napa Valley and Australia’s Hunter Valley. He points to Australian winemaker Maurice O’Shea’s early 20th century “Burgundy” bottlings and to observations from wine writer Oliver Styles about how pinot noir can add acidity and aromatic lift to shiraz in warm climates. Berger also recounts a Napa tasting of a 1947 Beaulieu Vineyard pinot noir that held up surprisingly well as a reminder that lighter, earlier-harvested pinot can age. He argues the blend is worth testing in the United States, especially as a way to temper late-picked, high-alcohol syrah with brighter, higher-acid pinot. Napa Valley Features is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Subscribe NAPA VALLEY, Calif. — I was musing recently about what sort of wine blends might make an amusing wine. Since we now have artificial intelligence to assist our most random thoughts, we can investigate daydreams without friends’ derisive laughter or mockery. Blends intrigue me — although most of the domestic versions I have tried are poorly conceived. Far too many are high in alcohol, which has the effect of covering up some of the more distinctive developments that should exist in blends that give the wine its various personalities. Blends that come from other countries frequently make a lot more sense than some domestic concoctions. Yes, grenache blended with syrah can happily accept other grape varieties here, but in the production of Chateauneuf-du-Pape, it can be sublime. Viognier added in small amounts and co-fermented with syrah usually gives the resulting wine a little more “oomph” and can also improve the aromatic expression. And I have tasted some good examples of pinot gris blended with other grapes to produce wines of intriguing complexity. Unfortunately, far too many domestic blended wines are not carefully thought through, which can leave a winemaker with what I recently described as a chicken with four legs. It might run really fast, but it might also taste like vulcanized rubber. When quality blends work, they can be fascinating. Over many decades, I have seen successes from chardonnay blended with pinot blanc, chardonnay-sauvignon blanc and chardonnay/viognier combinations. And carignane has been successfully added to zinfandel. Since at least half of the vineyard acreage in Napa Valley is planted to cabernet sauvignon and its cousin varieties, all blends of these grapes can be very good, but most of them do not provide much in the way of exoticness. And most other Napa red wine blends tend to be fairly dense, lack distinctiveness or are ultrasoft. Heavyweight red wine blends made from later-harvested fruit are so common these days that most are boring to me. Late-harvested fruit leans in the direction of raisins. And raisins typically do not have much varietal personality. After using artificial intelligence to inquire about various worldwide blends without much success, I finally asked AI what it could tell me about the blending syrah and pinot noir. I suspected that such a blend wouldn’t be all that strange because in a way the two varieties are similar, each with a trace of rustic character and some herbal-ness. But I had never heard of such a blend. I knew that most people would suggest that the two grapes are radically different from one another, so any blend of the two would display their incompatibility. But I believed that there might be a kind of remote parallel between the two varieties, especially when I thought of them growing in warm climates, where PN would be lighter and might moderate the tannin+heaviness of later-picked warm-climate syrah. Early picked PN might lighten the overall impact. Share Today’s word puzzle: Challenge your vocabulary with this week’s mystery word. Submit your answer in the poll and check the bottom of the page for the correct answer. Loading... We know that pinot noir almost always prefers cooler climates and slightly earlier harvesting. Yet it grew somewhat successfully in specialty areas in the center of the Napa Valley decades ago. PN flourished on cool, high-altitude Mount Veeder (i.e., Mayacamas Vineyards) and even in cool-ish Oakville (Robert Mondavi Winery) in the 1970s. And I tasted some extremely good pinots from BV and Martini from Carneros dating back to the 1950s. The great winemaker André Tchelistcheff knew that you could make a long-lived PN by earlier harvesting, even though the color of the wine might be extremely light, almost along the lines of dark rosé. To investigate this little-known aspect of André’s career, Chris Clever, a Hawaiian wine-collector and passionate lover of mature and carefully aged red wines, went out of his way to obtain an extremely rare bottle of an old BV pinot noir. The tastings that Clever has sponsored over the years, mostly for friends in the Napa Valley, are always dramatic. So I was excited when he said he was planning to do another monumental tasting in Napa two months ago. The event started out with a rather raggedy-looking but well-stored bottle of 1947 BV pinot noir. It cost Clever nearly $300. He said he discovered it on an online auction site, “and someone else was chasing it.” Chris admitted he had little hope that this pale red wine would be any good. “But hey,” he said, “it’s almost 80 years old! “I’ll just be happy if it’s drinkable.” A dozen friends, including former BV winemaker Richard Peterson, who is now 94, were amazed at the high quality of the wine. It was clearly old, and the fruit component had declined slightly, but once you got past a hint of oxidation, the wine blossomed. I had never tasted anything quite as remarkable, primarily because despite an extremely pale color, the wine’s fruit was still front and center. The history of pinot in California clearly points to its preferred location as cool. By contrast, syrah has a reputation — which I believe is incorrect — as a warm-climate variety. (I strongly believe that it does magical things in colder climate, but far too many grape-growers shy away from planting syrah in cool areas because of the likelihood that it will not produce wines that achieve high points from the scorers. And frankly, it takes a remarkably creative and adventuresome winemaker to attempt to make wine from cold-climate syrah.) In the last few decades, syrah has replaced petite sirah on the list of favored California red wines that collectors once believed to be one of the best aging wines in the state. But as Napa Valley temperatures have changed, some of the PN that once grew here has been converted to warmer-climate varieties. Petite sirah is not one of them. One reason for this is that petite sirah tends to be substantially more tannic than syrah and thus requires more additional time in cask or bottle than does syrah. The petite sirah society, PS I Love You, remains a support group for it. I still have perhaps a dozen very old versions of petite sirah that prove it wasn’t wrong to put the wines away in a cool cellar. And throughout California dozens of wineries today continue to produce petite sirahs. One reason that syrah came into popularity is that it has always produced exemplary dark red wines in France’s Rhône Valley. And many people love to age domestic PS wines, believing they will emulate France’s Rhônes. Some do. But when warm-climate syrah is harvested a little late (or very late), they almost never mimic French versions. Without the proper structure, all red wines are doomed if they are aged too long, especially if the fruit was grown in a very warm region. All of this rattled around in my head for perhaps a week, during which I muddled through various internet sites seeking odd red-wine blends. I finally decided to investigate what was happening, if anything, with blending syrah and pinot. I honestly did not expect to find anything. What I found shocked me. This curious blend seems to be coming back into style, which in and of itself is a surprise because I never knew it had a past. In particular it appears to be picking up steam in Australia, notably in the warmer Hunter Valley, where it seems to have made its initial appearance under one of the country’s greatest winemakers — 100 years ago. As I was worming my way through some internet oddities on wine blends in other countries, I discovered an article in which winemaker and wine writer Oliver Styles said the progenitor of syrah-pinot blends appears to have been Maurice O’Shea, whom students of Australian wine history universally credit with being one of the finest blending winemakers in the history of that nation. Starting about 1925 (!), O’Shea was both the winemaker and the owner of Mount Pleasant in the Hunter River Valley. In an article on the subject was this from Styles: “O’Shea was a great winemaker who captured the attention of the industry for the quality of his wines at the time, and they have stood the test of time. Hence, Australia has an 80-year history with [it] because Maurice O’Shea saw the possibilities in the Hunter [Valley], and his wines aged.” The article says wine writer Max Lake “wrote that O’Shea was 50 years ahead of his time with several ideas.” I immediately called Darrell Corti, the brilliant Sacramento wine merchant who probably knows more about worldwide wines than just about anyone, and I asked him what he knew about syrah-pinot blends. “Absolutely nothing,” he said. It was the first time I had ever asked Corti a wine question for which he had no answer. Of course I had just learned about this blend a few minutes earlier. But literally two seconds later, he told me, “But it makes perfect sense because there is a sort of compatibility between the two varieties.” When I mentioned O’Shea to him and the potential he saw with shiraz-PN blends, Corti said that on a visit to Australia decades ago, he dined with Australia’s finest wine columnist, James Halliday, who “opened a 1942 Mount Pleasant Burgundy that O’Shea had made and it was absolutely wonderful, still fresh and alive. “But back then, many of the red wines from the Hunter [Valley] did not have the name of the variety on the label, so I could never be sure that he had not used some pinot noir in the blend.” It was then that I recalled having dinner with Halliday in about 2010 at a restaurant called Cleopatra in Sydney’s Blue Mountains. Halliday, who hosted that dinner, opened a 1945 Mount Pleasant “Burgundy” that was remarkable for the amount of intense fruit and complexity that it offered without any aggressive tannins. Styles pointed out in his essay that many of the pinot noir vines growing in the warm Hunter Valley were infected by leaf-roll virus and that the resulting grape juice and wine frequently were pink (!), which may have benefited shiraz by giving the blends substantially higher acids, which allowed them to age well. His article said the flavor profile of PN-shiraz blends included aromas of “small red berries, plums, cracked pepper, eastern spice, beetroot, briar, charcuterie notes and licorice on the finish.” (The comment about “charcuterie” is one I occasionally find in red wines from the Rhône Valley.) Styles said that shiraz–pinot noir blends might produce wines that were “unusual but potentially very successful.” He said shiraz adds “body, tannin and dark fruit depth” and that pinot noir “adds aromatic lift, brightness, and finesse.” One goal would be to produce “a fresh, spicy, medium-weight red with layered fruit and lively acidity.” (See our Wine Discovery below.) This clearly would be radically different from a warm-climate syrah-dominant dark red wine, especially if the acid were a little low and the pH were a little high, which combined might make a wine that does not age for a particularly long time. But the two Mount Pleasant red Burgundies that Halliday served to Corti and me were from the 1940s, proving to me that O’Shea structured the wines so they would age. One U.S. wine company that has routinely delved into this area of blending different varieties is Saintsbury in the Napa Valley. I called assistant winemaker Nicola Pellicani, who said Saintsbury once made a special blend of cabernet franc that was blended with pinot noir for a restaurant client. He said it turned out well. It was made primarily for the restaurant’s by-the-glass program. So, does syrah blended with lighter pinot noir have a future in the United States? I suspect it’s worth investigating. But if I were guessing, I would think that some of today’s more adventuresome wine consumers might be fascinated with such a concept. If such a wine were a blend of lighter (earlier-harvest, high-acidity) pinot that reduced the alcohol to below 14% and reduced the density and tannin of an otherwise powerful syrah, the result could well appeal to people who wanted the fascinating flavors of both grapes in a liquid that has charm and gracefulness, not potency. — Dan Berger has been writing about wine since 1975. Subscribe Share Wine Discovery: 2023 Ashes and Diamonds Rosa No. 4, Napa Valley ($45): Creative Napa winemaker Steve Matthiasson never lacks for distinctive and brilliantly strategized wines. Here, he and winemaker Diana Snowden Seysses have created a startlingly unique wine under the Ashes and Diamond brand that’s not white or red. So, you may be thinking, “It’s pink.” Well, no. What it is, really, is a pure delight, for want of a better description. The back label says it is a “limited edition interpretation of our rosé Cabernet Franc with the addition of Sangiovese.” A little skin contact darkened the color (so it’s more like a red without tannins). There appears to be a trace of residual sugar, but after drinking a substantial quantity of this delightful product that’s packed with enormous fruit, I now suspect it is dry but has so much exuberant fruit that it tastes succulent. The cork is imprinted with the winery’s name and a quotation from a 1958 Polish film titled “Ashes and Diamonds” by Cyprian Kamil Norwid, a 19th century Polish poet, essayist and renaissance man. Bottle Barn in Santa Rosa has this wine for $37.99. I defy anyone to say they don’t like it. It’s simply dramatic. Dan Berger Review Today’s Polls: Loading... Loading... Loading... Leave a comment Recent Poll Results: In Tim Carl’s article “Wine Chronicles: Dancing Crow — Engineering Fluidity in a Destabilized Wine Market,” Dancing Crow Vineyards describes how it’s reshaping production and sales to stay nimble amid tighter credit, shifting demand and margin pressure. The story highlights a hybrid winemaking setup split between its Hopland facility and custom crush, plus a diversified go-to-market mix that includes national distribution, a wine club, Costco and a wide network of farmers markets. The reader polls attached to the piece capture how respondents view Costco’s wine value and social acceptability, how rarely they buy wine at farmers markets and what most people typically spend on a weeknight bottle, alongside a vocabulary challenge focused on viticulture terminology. Question: What does the word “phenology” mean? Summary: Meaning of phenology. Most respondents selected chemical analysis of tannins (65%) while timing of seasonal life cycles was second (20%). The remaining options drew small shares (10%, 3%, 3%). The correct answer is C, Timing of seasonal life cycles. Total responses: 40. Question: How would you rate the value of wine at Costco? Summary: Perceived value of wine at Costco. A clear majority rated it better than most retailers (53%) or outstanding for the price (32%). Smaller shares called it about average (11%) or were not Costco members (5%), and none rated it below average (0%). Total responses: 38. Question: “I am comfortable serving Costco wine to guests.” Summary: Comfort serving Costco wine to guests. Most respondents agreed (82%) with a smaller group neutral or unsure (12%). Very few disagreed (3%) or were not Costco members (3%), and no one chose other (0%). Total responses: 34. Question: How often do you buy wine at farmers markets? Summary: Frequency of buying wine at farmers markets. Nearly four-fifths said they never buy wine at farmers markets (79%). A minority said they buy a few times a year (15%) or have tried it once (5%), and no one reported buying weekly or two to three times a month (0%, 0%). Total responses: 39. Question: For a typical weeknight meal, what do you usually spend on wine? Summary: Typical weeknight wine spending. Most respondents said they spend less than $15 (44%) or $15–$29 (39%). Smaller shares spent $30–$49 (11%) or $50–$75 (6%), and none spend more than $75 (0%). Total responses: 36. This Week's Word Challenge Reveal: The correct answer is D: “Tool measuring slope or incline.” A “clinometer” is an instrument used to measure angles of slope, elevation or depression relative to gravity. Surveyors, geologists and foresters use it to determine terrain steepness and landform angle. In wine regions such as Napa Valley, slope matters because hillside vineyards often differ from valley-floor plantings in drainage, sunlight exposure and erosion risk. Measuring slope helps growers and land managers better understand site conditions that shape vineyard design and vine performance. The word comes from the Greek “klinein,” meaning to lean or slope, and “metron,” meaning measure. It entered scientific and surveying language as instruments for measuring terrain became more refined in early modern Europe. Today clinometers are still used in geology, forestry, surveying and environmental science to measure slope and related angles. Napa Valley Features is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a paid subscriber. 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