History made as Tasmanian red wins top gong at prestigious wine show

The winner of the prestigious Sydney Royal Wine Show is a red, but it is not from the regions best known for shiraz.

The 2024 Pooley Syrah was judged Best in Show and is produced in Tasmania, a long way from the classic red wine regions of South Australia.

Syrah is a variety of shiraz, known for its dark fruit and peppery spice.

A panel of 31 judges assessed more than 1,500 wines across 55 classes from around Australia to decide the winner of the Sydney show, which is recognised as the oldest and most prestigious wine award in the country.

Chair of judges, Mike De Iuliis, said cool climate wines like the Pooley Syrah, were the highlight of this year's show.

"It really demonstrates that these amazing wines can come from anywhere in this country," he said.

The Coal River winery also won the Best Red and Best Shiraz trophies, becoming the first Tasmanian shiraz to do so and ending the dominance of regions like the Barossa Valley and McLaren Vale.

Wine show's 200th anniversary

When the first wine was poured at the inaugural Sydney Royal Wine Show in 1826, the winner received a small gold medal honouring the best sample of colonial wine of that year's vintage.

The country had just a handful of serious winemakers producing mostly fortified wine, according to Sydney Royal Wine Show chair Angus Barnes.

"It was before the Hunter was developed as a wine region, it was before the Barossa was developed as a wine region," he said.

"It was before the famous James Busby came back to Australia with his collection of cuttings, so really [from a winemaking perspective] we were a very small colonial settlement at that stage."

By 1828 the show had grown to four classes, and Mr Barnes said the standard would have been high.

"The early governors of NSW were very keen to see some of our products get exported back to the UK and back to Europe," he said.

"They might not have tasted like the wines we taste today, but they were certainly of a quality at the time."

Mr Barnes said the wine show played an important role in the industry's development.

"When education wasn't as good, when technology wasn't as good, the shows could tell the producers if there were things they needed to do to their wine," he said.

"It gave them a chance to benchmark their wines — where their wines sat against their competitors."

In the two centuries the show has run, that prestige has helped elevate small and large producers and entire growing regions.

"For pinot noir it tends to be Tasmania and Victoria, for cabernet it's quite often those wonderful wines from Margaret River or the Coonawarra in South Australia, semillon obviously has a clear home in the Hunter Valley, but we also see some winners from the Barossa," Mr Barnes said.

But the industry is facing a crisis.

According to Wine Australia, global per capita wine consumption fell from 4 litres to 2.7 litres between 1990 and 2023.

The industry has also faced increasing pressure from other categories, including craft beer and mixed drinks.

Mr De Iuliis said the future lay in "getting people drinking better quality wine".

"I think that Sydney Royal can play a big role in that, because you know we obviously seek out the gems," he said.