Syrah Serine, and Sereine. Legends of Syrah's origins come from one of its homonyms, Shiraz. Because Shiraz, Capital of the Persian Empire (modern-day Iran), produced the well-known Shirazi wine, legends claim the Syrah grape originated in Shiraz and then was brought to Rhône. At least two significantly different versions of the myth are reported, giving different accounts of how the variety is supposed to have been brought from Shiraz to Rhône and differing up to 1,800 years in dating this event. In one version, the Phocaeans could have brought Syrah/Shiraz to their colony around Marseilles (then known as Massilia), which was
Syrah his "Naturalis Historia" about the wines of Vienne (which today would be called Côte-Rôtie), where the Allobroges made famous and prized wine from a dark-skinned grape variety that had not existed some 50 years earlier, in Virgil's age. Pliny called the vines of this wine "Allobrogica", and it has been speculated that it could be today's Syrah. However, the description of the wine would also fit, for example, Dureza, and Pliny's observation that vines of Allobrogica were resistant to cold is not entirely consistent with Syrah. It is called Syrah in its country of origin, France, as well as in