Defining regional variability and uniqueness of premium Australian Shiraz

Despite being instrumental in selling a wine’s story and commanding a price premium; terroir remains an enigmatic concept. This project supports a larger initiative, the Shiraz Terroir project (CSU 1602) that aims to describe the diversity of Shiraz wines in Australia, to understand what the compounds are in grapes that make those wines different, to understand how the grapevine responds to environmental signals and translates these signals into physiological responses that changes the composition in the berries that can be tasted in the wine. This project aims to provide new knowledge on the sensory and chemical profiles of Australian Shiraz wines that are responsible for the differences between wines at the sub-region, region and nationally.