Syrah in the US remains an enigma. Cult brands that emerged during the 1990s – Sine Qua Non on the Central Coast or Cayuse Vineyards in the Walla Walla Valley – are among the country’s iconic and most expensive wines.
But by and large, Syrah is still the perennial underdog of American wine.
‘There’s this assumption that Syrah [in America] is just this goopy, overly alcoholic, overoaked and overextracted wine,’ explains Jeff Lindsay-Thorsen (pictured, right), the winemakersommelier who produces WT Vintners’ Syrah from vineyards in Washington and Oregon.
The benchmark for Syrah is still encapsulated in the northern Rhône ideal. But to critics who claim that Syrah’s otherworldliness, its haunting florality and sanguine, sauvage complexities, can’t be found outside France, America’s Syrah growers have a firm response.
‘Sorry, that’s just ignorance,’ says Christopher Bates MS (pictured, below), the winemaker and owner of Element Winery in the Finger Lakes region of New York state. The greatness that we tend to associate with the northern Rhône, that perfume, that spice, that earthiness, ‘isn’t necessarily derived from just one specific place’, he explains. ‘It’s linked to a style and mentality of wine-growing and winemaking, too.’
While pioneering Americans have been championing Syrah since the 1980s, in the broader scheme of history Syrah is barely nascent here, suggests Nikolas Krankl, whose parents Elaine and Manfred established Sine Qua Non in 1994. Today, Nikolas and his wife Julia, founders of Fingers Crossed Wine in Santa Barbara County, are among America’s next generation of Syrah champions. ‘The gift and the curse is that we don’t have that history,’ says Julia. ‘But that also means we can be as creative as we want.’ The most provocative Syrahs grown in America are still a testament to that pioneering spirit – explorations of untried sites, blending from different climates and terroir, experiments
