Ned Goodwin MW: ‘Later-ripening Syrah represents an exciting new frontier for Tasmania as the climate warms’

Tasmania is Australia’s smallest state, a coven of those who seek change from the mainland cities, or a cadence away from the mainstream. There is that rare species, too, that was simply born there.

The bucolic undulations of Tasmania’s north, from the Tamar to Pipers River, are juxtaposed against the salt-bitten ruggedness of the east coast and the drier Derwent and Coal river valleys, where consistency of crop and proximity to the state capital Hobart account for a concentration of wineries.

Further south, sunlight jitters between gum leaves, vineyards and the road’s next bend, revealing silver bays-cum-cobalt tributaries in which fishing boats nestle in the Huon valley.

The Apple Isle has long been secure in its moorings as a spectacular place to grow grapes, traditionally those for sparkling wine and still Pinot Noir. Looking at Tasmania’s landscape today, it’s fascinating to ponder the veracity of empirical barometers such as sunlight hours and latitude – solid, sensible and traditional dictates for planting the likes of Riesling, now increasingly being pulled up or grafted over to more commercially viable options, despite superb examples from the likes of Stargazer and Pooley. Sauvignon Blanc, too, is going the way of the dodo.

Today, Chardonnay makes up just over 26% of Tasmania’s total plantings, while Meunier plantings are growing. These varieties are mostly used for fizz, the state’s most popular wine style, but also for still wines, reflecting global trends favouring whites and friskier reds. Of this lighter idiom, but far from the madding crowd of commercial obviousness, is Stoney Rise, Trousseau 2024. Energetic and eclectic, this delicious wine exhibits notes of distilled cherry, bound by a mandala of sinuous tannins, attesting to Tasmania’s capacity for diversity.

When established trains of thought are challenged, we ask whether there is something else; whether there are alternatives to the status quo. Climate change is shattering preconceptions with a velocity that can make established norms feel anachronistic, forcing us to be open to discovery, or to cling doggedly to that sinking ship of hyperbolic scores, rich wines and Boomer affectations.

Factors including soil structure and geology help determine quality vineyard sites and appropriate plantings, yet alignments once benign are increasingly malignant, as shade and elevation find favour in the quest to obviate heat and UV intensity in warmer regions, while peripatetic weather patterns in Tasmania are sublimated to a search for warmer, protected pockets to ripen grapes. What was once a bane is often a virtue as the environment’s variable nature challenges the vinous establishment.

A recent tasting of still Tasmanian wines did just that. While Pinot Noir was the inevitable focus, attendees expressed unsolicited support for Syrah. The irrefutable quality of many wines suggests that this later-ripening variety represents an exciting new frontier as the climate warms. Yet official figures indicate little statistical enthusiasm. Syrah plantings remain stagnant overall, nudging just under 2% of the state’s total. No wonder, since earlier renditions (then called Shiraz) largely bring recollections of ungenerous wines marked by the bitter astringency of an ill-suited climate.

Misguidedly, certain producers sought to emulate headier South Australian bottlings via extraction and oak. But today, a raft of midweight wines dabbed with lilac, tapenade, blue fruits and smoked meat touch on the cracked-pepper vibrato of the northern Rhône, tempered by Aussie generosity.

Impressive examples come from Stefano Lubiana and hughes & hughes, and a ferrous, almost sinewy expression from Grey Sands, parrying with a svelte, fine-boned one from Marion’s Vineyard. Syrah makes sense, perhaps, if Tasmania is understood through a logic of specific sites that combat coldness, rather than the holistic Pinot-centric narrative of the establishment.

In my glass this month

Claudio Radenti of Freycinet Vineyard crafts fine Syrah. His overall parlance is cool climate, yet he focuses on ‘north- to east- facing warmer slopes, sheltered from winds’. The 2017 Shiraz (yes, that word) has now aged impressively, while the younger-vine Louis Syrah 2021 is electric, taut and redolent of souk spices.

Related articles

• Andrew Jefford critiques the ‘NoLo’ trend sweeping the wine world
• Katherine Cole: ‘Is the real question whether wine regions could shield the rest of us from wildfires?’
• Andrew Jefford: ‘I wandered towards the cobalt Adriatic inlet next to the vineyards and looked back…’