Australian shiraz weighs in with tasty prices

he best bang for the buck in red wine these days is offered by Australian wineries.

I love California wines, and their prices are coming down, but if you want pure value for the quality you get, look Down Under.

There are, of course, exceptions to every generalization like this, but price-conscious drinkers of red wines can find some bargains, especially if they like syrah, or as they call the grape in Australia, shiraz. As a category, sales of these wines have been soaring while California sales are down.

Australian wineries offer shiraz and shiraz blends in prices ranging from under $10 to more than $150. Today, we will look at shiraz wines in the $10 range.

I asked the wine tasters to sample five inexpensive shiraz wines. Here is how they compared:

- 2001 Grant Burge Barossa Vines Shiraz at $11.99. The aroma was full of luscious blackberry and other dark fruit, plus chocolate. In the mouth, we tasted the dark fruit and chocolate with a good bit of alcohol. On the finish, we tasted fig and dried fruit. This wine had good acids and a distinctive personality. It finished third in our tasting.

- 2001 "Terra Barossa" Thorn-Clarke Shiraz at $9.99. The aroma reminded us of cherry as in cherry cough syrup, and we encountered that flavor even more so in the mouth. It was not as complex as the Grant Burge, but it had a long cherry finish, mixed with a slight but nice alcohol burn down the throat.

- 2000 Tatachilla Breakneck Creek Shiraz at $9.99. This wine had a very leathery aroma that one taster described as "very sexy." It had a smokiness or dustiness like a southern French syrah. The fruit was not as jammy as we expected in an Aussie shiraz, but it was very elegant in a Rhone style. The Tatachilla finished second in our tasting.

- 2002 Paringa Shiraz at $11.99. The bottle brought to the tasting was bad. Another tasting found the wine to be juicy and full of black fruit. This wine has improved during the past few vintages and represents a complex wine for this price.

- 2001 Lindemans Shiraz Reserve at $9.99. This wine had an inky color and a jammy fruit nose, with coffee, fruit and pepper. In the mouth, it had more backbone than the Tatachilla, a big wine that needs food to be at its best. "This is an awesome wine for $10, " said one of the tasters in the blind tasting. The Lindemans finished first in our tasting. Tasters found this a great wine for this price range.

Questions can be sent to Frank Sutherland, editor, The Tennessean, 1100 Broadway, Nashville, TN 37203 or e-mailed to editor