Geographe in Western Australia is not perhaps the first region that springs to mind when you’re thinking about quality shiraz. But that’s where the top wine at this year’s Great Australian Shiraz Challenge comes from. The 2022 Smallwater Estate Shiraz is from a vineyard near Donnybrook, south of Perth, a location historically better known for its apples than its grapes.

That’s the beauty of blind-tasting competitions like this. The judges are assessing nothing but the wines in the glasses in front of them, unswayed by famous labels or price tags. It allows for wines from little-known producers and unexpected places to shine.

Then again, it should come as no surprise, really, that the judges would choose a shiraz from a cooler region not traditionally associated with the variety. Shiraz like the Smallwater Estate’s, made in more of a “syrah” style (lighter in body and spicier), is in fashion. Indeed, the winner of the top gong at this show last year – and the year before that – was a shiraz from Riversdale vineyard in Tasmania. And other recent winners have come from chillier spots such as the Adelaide Hills, and Hilltops in NSW.

This is a far cry from when the Great Australian Shiraz Challenge was first held in 1995. For the first 15 years of its existence, the list of top wines in the show was almost completely dominated by big, dark, boofy wines from the Barossa, McLaren Vale and Clare because these were the wines that were fashionable in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

It’s great to see a much more diverse spread of shiraz styles. And it’s also good to see the Great Australian Shiraz Challenge still going strong – because it’s needed now perhaps more than ever.

The show first came about when three winemakers in the central Victorian region of Nagambie were thinking about ways to promote the shiraz variety and get consumers, particularly in export markets, to buy more shiraz wines.

“Australian wine was not well known internationally [in the early 1990s],” says Alister Purbrick of Tahbilk winery. “In those days, annual export sales were only around $100 million. There was a lot of work to be done … to raise Wine Brand Australia’s image.”

Purbrick and his colleagues felt the one variety that Australia made well, in different styles and across the country, was shiraz, and that this should be promoted as quintessentially Australian.