Few places carry a name so soaked in wine as Shiraz. For thousands of years the Persian city was a byword for the vine — celebrated by its kings, immortalised by its poets, and eventually attached, romantically, to one of the world’s great red grapes. The truth about Shiraz, Iran and wine is a mixture of ancient glory, mystical poetry, and one very persistent myth. Untangling them is one of the most fascinating stories in wine. (Part of the complete history of wine.)
Quick facts
- Shiraz was one of the most famous wine cities of the old world.
- Iran holds some of the earliest evidence of winemaking on earth.
- The grape called Shiraz is really Syrah, from France — not Persia.
A city synonymous with wine
Shiraz, in south-western Iran, was for centuries one of the most celebrated wine towns of the Near East. Its surrounding vineyards produced a wine famous across the region, and the city’s reputation for the grape lasted from deep antiquity through the golden age of Persian culture1.
The deep roots of Persian wine
Persia is not a footnote in wine’s story — it stands very near its beginning. At the Neolithic village of Hajji Firuz Tepe, in Iran’s Zagros mountains, archaeologists found a humble clay jar dating to around 5400–5000 BCE2.
When the biomolecular archaeologist Patrick McGovern analysed its yellowish residue, he found tartaric acid — the chemical fingerprint of grapes — together with resin from the terebinth tree, added as a preservative. The resin was the clincher: this was not an accident of fermented juice but wine made on purpose. For years it was the oldest chemically confirmed wine on earth, since narrowly overtaken by finds in neighbouring Georgia—but Persia remains one of the true cradles of the vine3.
Wine at the Persian court
By the height of the Achaemenid empire, wine flowed at the royal table. The Greek historian Herodotus recorded a striking Persian custom: that they would debate important matters twice over — once drunk and once sober — trusting a decision only if it satisfied them both ways. Whatever the truth of it, wine was clearly woven into the fabric of Persian public life4.
The poets’ cup
Shiraz reached its greatest fame as the city of poets. Sa’di, born there around 1210, and above all Hafez, who died there in 1390, filled their verse with the imagery of wine, the tavern and the cup5.
In Hafez, the wine is rarely just wine. Drunkenness stands for the dissolution of the self and union with the divine; the tavern becomes a temple and the wine-seller a spiritual guide — a daring Sufi symbolism, made all the more powerful for flourishing in an Islamic society that formally forbade the drink. That tension between the sacred and the forbidden is the beating heart of Persian wine poetry67.
In the poetry of Shiraz, the cup of wine became the truest mirror of the soul.— on the poets of Shiraz5
The Shiraz–Syrah myth
So it seems natural to assume that the grape called Shiraz — the Australian name for Syrah — came from the Persian city, perhaps carried west by a returning crusader. It is a lovely story, and completely untrue8.
In 1998 DNA typing at the University of California, Davis, settled the matter: Syrah is the natural offspring of two obscure grapes of south-eastern France, Dureza and Mondeuse Blanche, and is native to the northern Rhône, not Persia. The name almost certainly comes not from Shiraz but from an old local word, and the Persian, Sicilian and Egyptian origin-tales are all romance. Shiraz the grape and Shiraz the city simply share a beautiful coincidence of sound9.
| The claim | The reality |
|---|---|
| “Persia is a cradle of wine” | True — Hajji Firuz Tepe held wine from about 5400 BCE |
| “Shiraz was a great wine city” | True — famous for its wine and its poets, Hafez and Sa’di |
| “The Shiraz grape comes from Shiraz” | False — DNA shows Syrah is native to the French Rhône |
| “Wine is still made in Iran” | Largely false — banned since the 1979 revolution |
Wine in modern Iran
Iran’s own winemaking, once significant, effectively ended after the revolution of 1979, when alcohol was banned across the country10.
Yet the legacy endures. It lives in the poetry still recited at Hafez’s tomb in Shiraz, in the vast Iranian diaspora that keeps the old wine culture alive abroad, and in the name of a great grape that carries a whisper of Persia to vineyards around the world — even if, as it turns out, the grape was French all along11.
Frequently asked questions
More from this day in wine history
See everything else that happened on October 12 — who was born, what was bottled, and which laws were signed.
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References
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Shiraz (Iran). www.britannica.com ↩
- Penn Museum — Move Over, Hajji Firuz Tepe in Iran (earliest wine). www.penn.museum ↩
- Archaeology Magazine — World’s Earliest Wine. archive.archaeology.org ↩
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Persepolis. www.britannica.com ↩
- World History Encyclopedia — Hafez of Shiraz. www.worldhistory.org ↩
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Hafez. www.britannica.com ↩
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Saadi (Persian poet). www.britannica.com ↩
- Wine-Searcher — Shiraz / Syrah Grape. www.wine-searcher.com ↩
- Tablas Creek Vineyard — Syrah (Meredith DNA study, 1998). tablascreek.com ↩
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Iranian Revolution of 1978–79. www.britannica.com ↩
- World History Encyclopedia — Wine. www.worldhistory.org ↩
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