Looking for a show stopping sparkling wine to serve this Holiday? Then look no further than Sparkling Shiraz! This is a sparkling red wine - yes, you heard us right - an honest to goodness red wine made (usually) in the same way that Champagne is made. In case you are wondering, Shiraz is what they call Syrah in Australia, so they are the same wine. Like all sparkling wines, Sparkling Shiraz can vary from sweet to brut, but this is not your grandma’s sweet sparkling red wine. Sparkling Shiraz can be spicy, complex, earthy, and tannic - exactly like the still Syrah / Shiraz you know and love. In this episode, we explore how Sparkling Shiraz is made, reveal that it used to be known as Sparkling Burgundy, and let you know how you should serve it and what food to pair it with. And, we have two pretty different Sparkling Shiraz wines that we taste and review so you can choose something your guests (and you) will love! Wines reviewed in this episode: 2022 Paringa Sparkling Shiraz, The Chook Sparkling Shiraz
Send us a Text Message and we'll respond in our next episode!
Contact The Wine Pair Podcast - we’d love to hear from you!
Visit our website, leave a review, and reach out to us: https://thewinepairpodcast.com/
Follow and DM us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thewinepairpodcast/
Send us an email: joe@thewinepairpodcast.com
Show Notes
Episode 149: Holiday Sparkling Wines #4: Sparkling Shiraz! 00:00
Hello! And welcome to The Wine Pair Podcast. I’m Joe, your sommelier of reasonably priced wine, and this is my wife and my wine pairing partner in crime, Carmela. And we are The Wine Pair!
If you are new to our podcast, here is a quick orientation! Each week, we explore a different wine varietal or blend or style of wine — like Picpoul or Priorat or Sparkling Shiraz — and dive into how to make great wine choices and what makes new and different wine so fun to learn about. Our goal is to help you expand your wine knowledge in a fun way that is understandable and accessible to regular people, not just wine nerds! We also taste and review 2-3 wines under $20 each, and share our scores and recommendations with you to help you find great wines without breaking the bank. So, thank you so much for joining us! And, we are proud to say that Decanter Magazine calls us fun, irreverent, chatty, and entertaining.
So, Carmela, it has been a bit of a tradition of ours to do some sparkling wine episodes each year around the holidays, and we do that because, for one, we love sparkling wine, and for two, although we think sparkling wine is perfect to drink every damn day of the week, we know there is a special affinity for sparkling wine during the Holidays, because it is fun and festive and usually pretty damn delicious!
We have done several episodes on sparkling wines in our podcast - las Holiday we did one on Brut Prosecco - and yes, specifically Brut because we find that a lot of Prosecco, while delicious, is often a little on the sweeter side - and as we mention often just remember that if a sparkling wine says it is dry, it is actually sweet. If you want a dry sparkling wine, look for brut. Confusing, yes, but important.
We have also done episodes on Sparkling Rosé for the Holidays, as well Crémant which is a French sparkling wine made in the same fashion as Champagne but is not from the Champagne region and is awesome but sometimes a fraction of the cost of Champagne - so check out those episodes from previous years if you want to know more. You can always go to our website and search.
And every year around the 4th of July, we do episodes specifically on sparkling wines from the United States, and we call those episodes great American sparklers, because, get it, fireworks - sparklers - right, you get it. But anyway, there is a lot of great sparkling wine made in the United States believe it or not, including in the great state of New Mexico. Not joking.
And, the other thing we say all the time is DO NOT call sparkling wine Champagne unless the sparkling wine is actually from the Champagne region of France. If you want to avoid making a classic wine faux pas (which is a French term, by the way) follow this rule - it is an important public service announcement to save you embarrassment and ridicule.
But this year we wanted to do something different, and I thought it would be fun to do an episode on Sparkling Shiraz. And, in case you were wondering, it is exactly what you think. A sparkling red wine, not a rosé wine, but an honest to god red wine made into a sparkling wine. And we’ll tell you how that do that a little bit later.
Now, it may be surprising to find out that there are sparkling RED wines because they are not super common. Some of you may be familiar with the Italian sparkling wine Lambrusco, but that is just one of many different types of sparkling red wines. Sparkling reds, like Lambrusco, can be sweet or brut, and in this episode we are a bit more focused the brut rather than sweet sparkling reds. And, believe it or not, it is much harder to make a sparkling red than a still red, and so usually the good ones are carefully crafted, not the plonk that some of you may be thinking of when you think about a sweet sparkling red wine.
By the way, as a former English teacher and word nerd, if you want to impress your friends with your wine knowledge, use the term plonk. It is a term from Great Britain that means low quality wine. So, if you are drinking bad wine, you can proudly call out - “who served this plonk?” with a look of disdain on your face.
Back to sparkling Shiraz, we actually served a sparkling Syrah from Treveri Cellars this Thanksgiving at your parents, Carmela, and it was a total hit - and remember that Shiraz and Syrah are the same grape and wine, it’s just that the Australians call the wine Shiraz - and we will also note that Sparkling Shiraz is just kind of different from almost any other wine. It’s fun, it’s festive, but it is also a bit on the funky side, so you have to be ready and prepared for it.
So, if you want to serve a conversation starter this holiday, we strongly suggest you serve a sparkling Shiraz, and we’ll tell you more about what it is, how it is made, if you should serve it cold, and we have a couple of sparkling Shiraz wines from Australia, which, again, is where Shiraz is going to come from, and each is made in a different styles which is fun, and we’ll let you know if either of those is worth buying and serving this holiday . . .
But first . . . we have to do our shameless plug.
Thank you for listening to us and for supporting our show, and if you haven’t had the chance to do so yet, now would be the perfect time to follow or subscribe to our podcast - it is a free way to support us, and then you never have to miss a show! - and a huge thank you to all of you who have subscribed already!
And, another great way to support is to leave a nice rating and review on our website or on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or other podcast app so we can continue to grow our listeners.
You can also follow us and see pictures of the wines we are tasting and trying today and weird AI pictures I like to make on Instagram at thewinepairpodcast, we are now on Bluesky as well if you are curious and we post differently on there than we do on Instagram, and you can contact us on our website thewinepairpodcast.com, and you can sign up for our email newsletter there and get news and food and wine pairing ideas and more! And if you send me a note at joe@thewinepairpodcast.com with your mailing address, I will send you some Wine Pair Podcast stickers for free! And we got some good feedback on them already - thank you Adrienne - so let us know!
And by the way, if you are looking for a specific episode or wine, going to our website and searching is a great way to find stuff!
And we want to make content you care about and you like, so send us a note and tell us what you like and don’t like, if there are wines you want us to try or wine making areas of the world you are curious about - and we’ll take care of it! A shoutout to Riccardo who reached out to us and asked us if we would consider doing an episode on aromatic dry wines, so I am going to dig into that for a future episode, and Christine reach out to tell us that she has found that she loves Rosso di Montalcino, which is an awesome wine, and we are going do an Italian wine adventure on it in the future! And a shout out to Emma who reached out to let us know she was taking her Somm exam this weekend, so we are thinking about you, Emma, and we know you’ll crush it!
And, as we do every week, we’ll tell you someone we think you should recommend The Wine Pair Podcast to - because the best way for us to grow listeners is when you tell your family and friends about us because your endorsement by word of mouth is like GOLD. This week, we want you to recommend us to anyone who wants to show off a little this holiday, or for red wine drinkers who think that sparkling wine is not serious wine. Because this episode is just right for them!
ARTICLES and LINKS
- https://www.salon.com/2021/10/15/yes-there-are-sparkling-red-wines-that-taste-good_partner/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plonk_(wine)#:~:text=Plonk%20is%20a%20term%20used,it%20became%20naturalised%20in%20Britain.
Topic: WTF is Sparkling Shiraz? 12:00
Alright, Carmela, let’s find out once and for all what the F this thing called Sparkling Shiraz is.
Sparkling Shiraz is really at its heart an Australian thing, and in Australia, the wine was originally called Sparkling Burgundy until France created and really started to enforce the A.O.C. classification which limited the term Burgundy to only wines produced in the Burgundy region of France. The French take away all our fun. Champagne, Burgundy, what next? Will they take away French Fries or French Dip or French Onion flavored potato chips?!?
Interestingly enough, the origin of the name Sparkling Burgundy came from a man called Charles Pierlot who was a French winemaker who went to Australia in the 1890s. Pierlot had come to Australia to make Champagne, but the problem was, there were no classic Champagne grapes - like Chardonnay or Pinot Noir - available to him. So, he decided that he would just use the local Shiraz grapes that were plentiful.
At the time, the term "Burgundy" was widely used in Australia and other New World wine regions to refer to basically any red wine, and so, because it was a red sparkling wine, he just called it Sparkling Burgundy, which was the name used for several decades. Once the French said “non” to the use of Sparkling Burgundy, the Australians just changed it to Sparkling Shiraz.
However, Pierlot may not have been the first person to make Sparkling Shiraz, because evidently there was a dude named Edmond Mazure who is credited with making the first version in 1895. But others say it may have been a guy named Auguste D’Argent. Let’s just say that the origins are not entirely clear, but it was started around the turn of the 20th century, and like the South Africans last week, these Australians gotta get their stories straight!
Now, as I mentioned, it is complicated to make most Sparkling Shiraz because it is usually made in the traditional champagne style - often called méthode traditionelle or méthode champenoise - which is a long and complex process.
We have links in our show notes - did you know we have show notes? - that explain the process in more detail, but the simplest way to describe this method is that Shiraz grapes are first fermented in stainless steel and then aged in oak barrels, and this creates just a normal still wine. Then, there is a second fermentation, and that is where the bubbles come from.
In the second fermentation, the wine is bottled and sugar and yeast are added and then the wine bottle is capped. The yeast eats the sugar, which makes carbon dioxide, and the carbon dioxide gets trapped in the wine and that, my friends, is what makes the bubbles. Natural carbonation. The wine is then bottle aged for a long period of time, sometimes two years or more.
When the wine is just about ready, and do you remember, Carmela, that we saw this first hand and in person in Spain when we went to the Cava winery called Recaredo, the bottles are popped open, disgorged to remove the sediment, and then, right before adding the cork and the cage, is the step called dosage. In the dosage step, most of the time sweet wine or wine and sugar are added, although you can find zero dosage sparkling wines, too, where they don’t add any additional sugar or wine.
The amount of time it takes to make wine in the Champagne style is why it can often be expensive, especially compared to sparkling wines like Prosecco which are made in a much faster and simpler way. Sparkling Shiraz made in the Champagne style can take several years to produce, and then many are aged for several more years after the corks are put on them - from 3 to 5 to even more than 10 years - before they are considered ready. So, sometimes you may find Sparkling Shiraz to be a bit pricey, if you can find it at all - although I am finding it more and more common.
I should also add that unlike a lot of sparkling wines which are a blend of different grapes, Sparkling Shiraz is usually just Shiraz.
When you think about drinking a brut Sparkling Shiraz, you can pair it with foods that you would normally pair with a red wine, which is fun because often you do not pair Sparkling wines with things like red meat. It does great with steak and ribs, with pork and lamb, and also turkey. It can also be great with savory vegetarian dishes as well as spicy Asian foods. A sweeter Sparkling Shiraz is going to be more of a white meat or spicy food wine and not do as well with red meats, and may be more of a before or after dinner wine, so just keep that in mind.
What I like about sparkling wines is that the bubbles can often act like a palate cleanser, making it a really good food experience. I actually think that for this reason alone, sparkling wine is not appreciated enough with meals - because we treat it like a party wine, which it is, but it is also a fantastic food wine.
And, like all sparkling wines, the experience of Sparkling Shiraz will be best if the wine is served cold. Which, again, may be surprising. On a side note, red wines should be served below room temperature anyway, but a Sparkling Shiraz should be fridge, or just above, fridge cold.
To me, Sparkling Shiraz can be a really interesting and complex experience. When we have had it, we have found it to be earthy tasting, which some may not love, and it is fruity and spicy like you would expect out of a Syrah. So, it’t kind of funky and fun and different. And, again, something that people who think sparkling wine is not serious enough may really dig.
So, on that note, I think it’s time to learn a little more about the specific wines we are drinking today. Whaddya say?
ARTICLES and LINKS
- https://www.christiesrealestate.com/blog/red-alert-why-you-should-be-drinking-sparkling-red-wine/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparkling_Shiraz
- https://www.bestswines.com/an-australian-tradition-bests-sparkling-shiraz/#:~:text=Sparkling%20Shiraz%20is%20one%20of,brilliant%20effervescence%20of%20sparkling%20wine.
- https://daily.sevenfifty.com/the-complex-role-of-dosage-in-sparkling-wine/
- https://wineguideaustralia.com/sparkling-shiraz/
Sparkling Shiraz Wines We Chose for This Episode 21:09
As usual, the wines we have chosen for this episode are under $20, and they should be relatively easy to find because I bought them both at wine.com. I will say that starting in 2025, we are seriously contemplating upping our pricing cap from $20 to $25, and one of our followers on Blue Sky Burt Lesnick is a big advocate of that - and he’s a damn doctor, after all. Upping the price ceiling will give us more options when it comes to wines we are able to share, and should open you all up to more opportunities to learn about new and different wines that are still reasonably priced.
Again, while Sparkling Shiraz or Syrah are not the most common wines, you should be able to find them at any decent sized wine shop, but probably not at your local 7-11.
Now our first wine is called the Paringa Sparkling Shiraz, and it is from 2022. I will also say that I found a tech sheet for this wine, and I am worried that you are all going to call me a liar because this wine is not made in the traditional method like Champagne, but in the Charmat method like Prosecco in which the wine is carbonated in a tank. I was really surprised to find that out, because the vast majority of Sparkling Shiraz is made in the Champagne style. I think this will be a good comparison to see if we can tell a difference at all.
The other thing I found out about this wine from the tech sheet is that it is pretty sweet. The residual sugar is like 32 grams, so this is not a brut sparkling, but more like a dry or demi-sec - remember in sparkling the term dry means it is on the sweet side.. So . . . this could be really interesting, because it is not really our style - we prefer brut sparkling - and it is different from the other wine we have which is not sweet. My bet is the first sip is going to be awesome, and then the sweetness is going to grow more and more tiresome, but we’ll see.
There is quite a bit of information on the tech sheet related to the Hickinbotham family who makes this wine, and according to the tech sheet, they have been making wine in Australia since 1936, and the grandson of the original founder and the great grandson run the winery in southern Australia today.
I couldn’t find ratings for this wine except for a website called Kenswineguide.com, and good old Ken gave the wine an 87.5 rating, so there you go.
The second wine we are going to drink is called The Chook Sparkling Shiraz and it is, as most sparkling wines are, non-vintage, meaning that it is not attributed to a specific year because it, like a lot of sparkling wine, is combined with juice from different years, often as part of the dosage process.
Now, I will say that listener Christine said we should review this wine, and the good news was that I had already purchased it for this episode. This is a fairly easy wine to find at larger wine shops, and has a review from suck-ass James Suckling. Who shockingly gave it a 90 rating. Like he gives everything. Friends, if you see a sticker or label that says James Suckling gave a wine a 90 rating, just ignore it.
The Chook has a big rooster on its cover, and Chook is a slang term for chicken in Australia. This wine comes from McLaren Vale in Southern Australia, and is made in the traditional Champagne style. It is a blend of wines between 3 and 5 years old, so they do that for consistency, but what is interesting about this wine is that they mature each batch each year in French oak barrels before they blend it with younger Shiraz which they say makes it a little fresher tasting. So this could be really interesting!
The wine we have says it is 13% alcohol, but I think the alcohol percentage can change for each batch that is produced. It also says it is Vegan friendly, which means that there are no animal based products used in any part of the process, and they also label it as “women in wine” - In this case, the winemaker is a woman named Alexia Roberts who has been making wines for more than 20 years and advocates for women in the wine industry, especially in Australia. Which is awesome. On a side note, we do periodically interview winemakers, and I have had the chance to interview quite a few women winemakers, and so I encourage you to listen to those previous episodes because I always learn a ton.
But, I think that is enough information - let’s get to drinking! We’ll take a quick break and if you have these wines or a sparkling shiraz or any wine, drink along with us, and you will get participation points, and if you send us a note - just email me with your mailing address - we will send you some free “I drink along with The Wine Pair Podcast” stickers like we are doing for Corinne!
ARTICLES and LINKS
- https://www.quintessentialwines.com/assets/client/File/Fact%20Sheets%202/Paringa/Sparkling-Shiraz/Paringa_Sparkling_Shiraz_2022_fact-sheet.pdf
- https://irp.cdn-website.com/dc3f3ee2/files/uploaded/FS%202%20The-Chook-Sparkling-Shiraz-NV.pdf
- https://pennyshill.com.au/our-winemaker/
2022 Paringa Sparkling Shiraz, The Chook Sparkling Shiraz Wine Tasting, Pairing, and Review 28:31
Wine: Paringa Sparkling Shiraz (Click here to find this wine on wine.com. We may be compensated if you purchase)
Region: Australia, Riverland South Australia
Year: 2022
Price: $16.99
Retailer: wine.com
Alcohol: 14%
Grapes: Shiraz / Syrah
Professional Rating:
What we tasted and smelled in this Paringa Sparkling Shiraz:
- Color: Very dark and opaque, pretty pink bubbles, create a boa-like rim
- On the nose: Plum, clove, cinnamon, baking spices, black cherry, craisin, smoke, cedar
- In the mouth: Sweet, juicy, jammy, concord grape juice, dark cherry juice, coffee, cocoa, bitter on end, clay and earth, grippy tannin, like a fruit cooler
Food to pair with this Paringa Sparkling Shiraz: A great dessert wine, chocolate torte, flourless chocolate cake, salted dark chocolate, salty foods, very spicy foods. A great New Year’s Eve wine.
As a reminder on our rating scale, we rate on a scale of 1-10, with no half points, where 7 and above means that we would buy it, and 4 and below means that we are likely to pour it down the sink, and a 5 or 6 means we are likely to drink it and finish it, but we are probably not going to buy it.
Paringa Sparkling Shiraz Wine Rating:
- Joe: 7/10
- Carmela: 8/10
Wine: The Chook Sparkling Shiraz (Click here to find this wine on wine.com. We may be compensated if you purchase)
Region: Australia, McLAren Vale
Year: NV
Price: $19.99
Retailer: wine.com
Alcohol: 13%
Grapes: Shiraz / Syrah
Professional Rating: JS 90
What we tasted and smelled in this The Chook Sparkling Shiraz:
- Color: Dramatic in the glass, dark, bubbles are only obvious on the top of the wine because it is opaque, look like grape juice
- On the nose: Earthy, plum, cherry, menthol, salty, black licorice, anise
- In the mouth: Has sweetness like a prosecco, earthy, tastes a bit like Campari, orange rind, cherry, feels like a fall wine, cinnamon stick, menthol, fresh rosemary
Food to pair with this The Chook Sparkling Shiraz: Chicken, turkey, rolled stuffed chicken, chicken piccata, Thanksgiving, spicy Chinese food, spicy Thai food, fried chicken, orange chicken, General Tso’s chicken, french fries
Super fun and festive.
The Chook Sparkling Shiraz Wine Rating:
- Joe: 8/10
- Carmela: 8/10
Which one of these are you finishing tonight?
- Carmela: Paringa Sparkling Shiraz
- Joe: The Chook Sparkling Shiraz
Taste profiles expected from Sparkling Shiraz 44:33
- General
- Wine Guide Australia: chocolate, spice and liquorice, alongside vibrant raspberry, dark berries and plum.
- Other: Raspberry, red currant, roasted plum, blueberry, black pepper, coconut, coffee, cigar box, vanilla
- Paringa Sparkling Shiraz
- Winery: Lifted sweet plum with traces of licorice, mulled jam along with spice fruits and dark cherries. Succulent creams with a persistent mouth filling sensation with an explosion of earthy black fruits, followed by a velvety tannin finish.
- Kens Wine Guide: It opens with a bramble and black cherry-cola bouquet with a hint of oak. On the palate, this wine is medium bodied with medium acidity. The flavor profile is blend of raspberry, black cherry-cola, and black pepper. We also detected some hints of mocha as well. This sparkler will appeal to younger generation. It would be perfect, served chilled at the beach
- The Chook Sparkling Shiraz
- James Suckling: Lots of licorice and tea leaf with meat and blackberry aromas. Full body, soft and lightly velvety sparkling red wine. Flavorful finish. Drink now.
- International Wine Cellar - Australia: Sweet red and dark berry flavors are braced by zesty minerality and flesh out with air. Juicy, nicely focused cassis and blueberry on the finish, which is unusually energetic for this genre
Outro and how to find The Wine Pair Podcast 47:11
Ok, so, Carmela, it’s time for us to go, but before we do, we want to thank you very much for listening to us - and if you haven’t done so yet, now would be the perfect time to follow or subscribe to our podcast and also a fantastic time to leave us a nice rating and review on our website or Apple podcasts or other podcast app - and it is an awesome and free way to support us and help us grow listeners.
We would also love to hear from you about a wine you would like us to taste and review. You can leave a message for us on our website thewinepairpodcast.com and you can join our email newsletter there - and if you missed our latest newsletter, email me and I will send it to you. You can do that by reaching out at joe@thewinepairpodcast.com. And tell us some things you want to hear us do, or not hear us do!
Alright, with that, we are going to sign off, so thanks again, and we will see you next time. And, as we say, life is short, so stop drinking shitty wine.
Support The Wine Pair Podcast by clicking on this affiliate link to wine.com and find great wines under $20! You can also support us by clicking on this affiliate link to join the Wall Street Journal wine club and get a special welcome offer!