To celebrate Australia Day this week, the Australian Wine Bureau held its annual two-day tasting in London. It was a mammoth event, staged with considerable style in an upper chamber of the Cafe Royal: 700-800 of the country's best wines, from some 150 producers, laid out for slurping, discussion and judgment at the hands of a swirling mass of journalists and traders. It held the same dangers of sensory overload as a protracted visit to the Louvre, with alcohol (sliding into the system despite assiduous spitting) increasing the risk of confusion. "Focus on just one thing," the pros advised. The result? Glorious immersion in Shiraz - the wine Australia does best.
The timing of this investigation (which I intend to continue over the next few weeks and urge you to do likewise) couldn't have been better. In this bleak, miserable weather, Shiraz is the stomach's cosy Damart - an unparalleled source of inner warmth. To double the effect, all you have to do is team it up with its natural red partner, a chunky casserole or even - unfashionable though it may be in some quarters - a steak. Irish beef will have to do while we wait for kangaroo.
Syrah, the great red grape of the Rhone, has taken on a new identity, and indeed won huge international popularity, in its Australian incarnation as Shiraz. It tastes sweeter and riper and more luscious than its French cousin, with chocolate often the dominant characteristic in a whole string of aromas and flavours that can range from reminders of bubblegum through ripe, dark red fruits of every description to coffee, caramel and tar. The earthiness of the Rhone can be in there, too - sometimes prompting wine tasters to go into curious raptures about jockstraps and sweaty saddles - and Syrah's classic pepper and spice are always in evidence too. It adds up to a rich, flavoursome mouthful - a bold, extrovert wine that seems the perfect expression of Australian personality in bottled form.
Shiraz equals razzamatazz. It is the variety where the wizardry of Oz most readily reveals itself - the red grape from which the country's most outstanding wines are produced, with Penfolds' Grange up there on Mount Olympus alongside Bordeaux's classed growths and Burgundy's grands crus. With international demand for Shiraz still climbing sharply (maybe because it is so distinctively different from over-common Cabernet and Merlot), more is being planted and more produced, in virtually every wine region in Australia. This is an intriguing reversal of fortune for a grape variety which was treated with contempt not so very long ago and, acre upon acre, ripped out of the ground.
There is heroism and romance in the story of its rescue, as indeed there is in the tale of how it came to be in Australia at all. The first Shiraz vines were planted in the Barossa Valley in South Australia in the 1840s and 1850s by Lutheran immigrants from Silesia. Three shiploads of these industrious farmers had apparently been imported by a Scottish entrepreneur with a labour shortage. In the hot valley, the Shiraz grape flourished, helping many family wineries to develop, over time, into industry giants. By the middle of this century, bulk wines, blended wines, were the main focus. By the 1970s, in a market thirsty for fruity whites, Shiraz was under threat. Widespread grubbing up seemed inevitable - but there were dissenters.
The Barossa Deutsch who had clung so tenaciously to their German traditions, as they do to this day with Strudel and Wurst and oompah-bands, were not all prepared to dispatch old, low-yielding Shiraz vines which they knew were capable of producing superb wines. Penfolds' winemaker Max Schubert had succeeded in having his Grange Hermitage recognised as a winner, even if with difficulty: so intense was the initial scepticism that he continued product ion in secret for several years, having been ordered by Penfolds' management to stop. Peter Lehmann was another key figure - a man who took major risks to realise the potential of Barossa Shiraz, in the process saving the livelihoods of hundreds of growers. In his wake, others followed.
The effect of this rearguard action is easy to see. A new generation of committed winemakers has begun to win a new generation of drinkers over to the substantial, sumptuous flavours of a grape which is now prized, not just in its Barossa homeland but in other parts of South Australia as well as Victoria and New South Wales. They are producing good wines at every level up to the most prestigious, with praise being heaped on classics such as Jim Barry The Armagh Shiraz, St Hallett's Old Block, Peter Lehmann's Stonewell and Rosemount's Balmoral Syrah.
The great thing about this Shiraz migration, from a tasting point of view, is that all the different regions produce subtly different styles - encouraging a lengthy journey of discovery. Why not spend February in Australia, whatever way you can?