WineAlign - Awards - 2024 NWAC Syrah

Results of the 2024 WineAlign National Wine Awards of Canada (The Nationals)

Syrah

Category Overview by Judge Sara d’Amato

(Jump straight to the medal winners.)

Syrah has become a hot race in Canada, with judges having awarded 45 out 67 entries a medal this year. We showed more enthusiasm with last year’s slightly larger crop of syrah garnering 65 medals, but it is becoming evident that certain sites and wineries are consistently showing strengths in this category.

Once again, Naramata’s Lake Breeze received a platinum medal, this time for their 2020 cellar series “Mistral”, a nod to syrah’s Rhône Valley homeland. Many wines awarded medals this year were from wineries that have previously won for their syrah including Creekside, this time for their upper tier Broken Press Syrah from the Queenston Road Vineyard in St. David’s Bench, and to Kacaba’s Silver Bridge Vineyard Syrah – Ontario’s first syrah planting in 1997. Yet the first syrah in Canada was planted to BC’s Naramata Bench in 1991 by Alex Nichol. Phantom Creek followed suit in 1996, and this year was awarded a gold medal for their 2020 Kobau Vineyard Syrah, a vineyard planted in 2005. These maturing vineyards are showing their pedigree. Elsewhere in B.C., Similkameen’s Corcelettes Estate Winery shows notable consistency from vintage to vintage with their estate grown syrah.

“Syrah” over “shiraz” is indeed the key style in Canada – as evidenced by the fact that none of the medal winners label their wines as “shiraz”. Reflective of a French Rhône style “syrah”, as opposed to “shiraz”, wines labelled as such tend to be distinctively peppery, with more angular tannins, lower alcohol and exhibit more freshness than “shiraz”. Yet in Canada, there is no enforcement over the use of these terms. Vintage variation and place do play a deterministic role but the style of syrah in Canada is heavily influenced by winegrowing and winemaking decisions that vary from producer to producer.

As demonstrated by these results, Ontario can produce excellent syrah, yet the category has long been dominated by the strength of BC syrah and this year is no exception. The division of the 67 syrah entries in this year was a split between 51 from BC and 16 from Ontario. Moreover, 58% of the total syrah medals were awarded to BC wineries. For further context, 50% of Ontario wines entered medalled while 76% of all the BC syrah were awarded a medal. This is a category that will significantly show the lack of BC presence in the upcoming years. Syrah was one of the harder hit varieties in the 2022 B.C. freeze, followed by the polar vortex of January 2024 in the Okanagan Valley. We’ll wait to see how much syrah is replanted in BC of the 265 planted hectares pre-freeze. Surely hardiness will be considered but perhaps syrah’s high-quality potential in the province, as evidenced by this competition, will also play a role.

And the winners are…

Lake Breeze 2020 Cellar Series Mistral, Naramata Bench, Okanagan Valley, British Columbia

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