Kershaw Syrah: open it tonight or let it wait

Why this one has the stamina

Plenty of reds are enjoyable young and simply fade. Staying power usually comes down to acidity and tannin holding the wine upright, then the care it was given in the cellar, and Kershaw has stacked all three.

Five small parcels of Syrah are vinified separately, clone by clone, soil by soil, so nothing gets blurred. Maturation runs for seventeen months in French oak, around fifty-eight per cent of it new, split across barriques and puncheons from hand-picked Burgundy and Rhône coopers, with a portion resting in breathable concrete eggs. There's even an in-house algorithm matching each batch to the right cooper and barrel age, which is either delightful or slightly mad depending on your temperament.

Then comes the detail that matters most for keeping. No fining, no filtration: the wine is racked and bottled with its texture and tannin intact. Nothing has been stripped out to make it look tidier sooner. That's the material time has to work with.

If tonight wins

And tonight often should. This is a Sunday wine in the proper British sense, the kind that suits a long table and a slow afternoon as the light goes early.

Slow-roasted lamb shoulder studded with rosemary and garlic is the match it was born for, the herbs meeting the wine's own savoury edge. A charred ribeye with black pepper butter works just as well, as does pan-seared duck breast with a peppercorn sauce. For a wet Tuesday, a beef and wild mushroom stew asks nothing more of you than a decanter.

And if there's any left when the plates are cleared, a wedge of aged Comté or mature Manchego will keep it going for another half hour. Hard, nutty cheese and peppery Syrah is one of those pairings that needs no explaining once you've tried it.

If you decide to wait

Then put it somewhere dark and cool, lying down, and genuinely forget about it. The worst thing you can do with a bottle you're ageing is check on it every few months and talk yourself into opening it on a Wednesday.

One honest caveat: cellaring is only rewarding if you like what ageing does. There's no prize for patience and no shame in drinking something at its most exuberant. A 750ml bottle holds about six glasses, which is one dinner for three people who are enjoying themselves.

The happiest arrangement, if you can manage it, is to have a bottle you drink now and a bottle you leave alone. You learn more about the wine that way than any tasting note can teach you, including the one on our Kershaw Chardonnay page, and you end up with a far better instinct for the rest of your reds.

If that sounds like your kind of decision to have hanging over you, the Kershaw Clonal Selection Syrah suits anyone who likes a red with pepper and tension rather than sheer weight. Decant it for an hour alongside a rosemary-heavy lamb shoulder, or lay it down and let the savoury side take over. Both versions are worth meeting.