Drink different - shiraz/syrah

The world of wine changes so much, that sometimes what you once might have thought of as the ‘alternative’ has become the mainstream, with the traditional swapping roles and becoming what you would turn to in order to ‘drink different’.

I was reminded of this recently when serving a Crozes-Hermitage to a friend.  Commenting on how nice it was, she told me she usually ‘went for a Shiraz’.  As a Frenchman, I bristled a little, because Shiraz is simply the new world name for Syrah, which has its spiritual home in the northern Rhône, from where the Crozes had come.

So if you always go for big-bodied, fruity Shiraz from Australia, why not drink different and come back to a 100% Syrah from one of the northern Rhone appellations like Crozes-Hermitage?  Crozes has all of the Shiraz fruit, but without some of the overpowering alcohol and burnt jamminess of some New World Shiraz.