World's Greatest Syrah & Shiraz Challenge

Well I suppose it had to happen to the world of wine at some stage.

For ages now the American's with their World Series Baseball has long held the mantle of the most misnamed championship in the world being comprised only of US based professional baseball teams, at least the Little League World Championships have kids & teams from outside of the US taking place.

I picked up the latest edition of WineState and looked at this headline "Worlds Greatest Syrah & Shiraz Challenge" and thought to myself that this should be a great read and wondered what great wines had been reviewed and showcased.

Excitedly I scanned through the results, it became quickly apparent to me that at least for this challenge that the worlds greatest Syrah and Shiraz seem to only come from either Australia or New Zealand.

An interesting use of the the phrase & title "worlds greatest"

I checked and double checked and no matter how many times I looked I could only find Australian and New Zealand wines being rated and scored. (maybe I missed them or maybe they were not up to standard )

For me at least for this claim to be made you would need to ensure that you at least had some of the great Syrah & Shiraz of places like Northern Rhone, certainly the spiritual home of Syrah, Burgundy, Baden in Germany, Oregon, Washington State, California, Arizona, Switzerland, South Africa & Austria somewhere in one of the tasting brackets.

But sadly this was not the case.

It troubles me greatly that claims like this are allowed  to be made and remain unchallenged.

There is certainly no denying that there are some wonderful and great wines being featured and reviewed in this challenge but to call it the worlds greatest is stretching the truth just a little to far.

Sadly in Australia there are very few opportunities where imported wines (excluding New Zealand) are allowed to stand and be judged in open company against our domestic wines and for the life of me no one has been ever able to explain that to me.

Certainly if we look at the Canberra Riesling Challenge this is one competition that appears not to be concerned about having domestic wines and foreign wines in an open class competition.

Most other shows will not allow this which I think is a real shame as if our wines are as good as we believe then why cannot we have a much more open and comparative opportunity to have them equally in class?

My god could this be the start of some of form of wine discrimination?

Lets be fair I have a great deal of respect for magazines like WineState but to call this the Worlds Greatest is simply not right or ethical.

The reader base of this magazine is heavily influenced by what is written and reviewed but this challenge is far from representative of the worlds best.

I wonder what some of my German and French wine makers will say when I show them this article, I can see them shaking heir heads along with long time wine advocate Dr Christian Schiller.

In the name of fairness & balance I believe that it is important to provide some further perspective so I have taken the liberty to embed a link to an article that Christian wrote about this very topic a few years back.

https://schiller-wine.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/tasting-syrahshiraz-around-world.html

We wonder why why wine drinkers are loosing confidence in what they are reading and moving more and more towards trusting their own experiences and that of their peers.

The danger is that the "wine experts of the world" are starting to loose a little of their lustre and allure, certainly assertions like this are only helping to push many new & emerging wine lovers & drinkers further away.

Foe me I might want to rename this challenge and call it " the Greatest Syrah & Shiraz of Australia & New Zealand" &  as this is what this is all about, its certainly no where near the worlds greatest that is for sure.

Such a shame and such a wasted opportunity for both our domestic and for our wonderful imported wines that would quiet happily fit  into a challenge like this.

I would be interested to hear what you think as at the end of the day this is just is just my opinion & view?

Cheers

Leigh

PS The bottle featured in this post is 2011 Weingut Ziereisen Gestad Syrah (Baden Germany) & is regarded by the likes of Jancis Robinson, Tim Aitken & many others to be amongst one of the finest example of  Syrah's in the world- oops!