Valle Secreto Syrah - The Co-op

A crowd-pleasing yet sophisticated Chilean Syrah from The Co-op

Valle de Secreto Syrah, 2018

I have long had a soft spot for Chile; it's a fascinatingly contradictory sort of place.

Blessed with amazing and varied terroir, it has the potential to be one of the great wine producing countries of the world. And yet far too many of its wines are pumped out in a bigger-is-better style that the US, in particular, loves.

Forward-thinking winemakers in Chile are increasingly making sophisticated, European-style wines and this is one of them; there's plenty of New World fruit and ripeness, but there's also balance and freshness. It treads a fine line between crowd-pleasing over-extraction and sophisticated nuance.

Valle Secreto Syrah 2018 (£11, The Co-op) plum and black fruits with plenty of oaky spice and port-like minty eucalyptus; blackcurrant leaf florality and sour-cherry freshness; savoury, supple and inky with good underpinnings; fine, grippy tannins.

Good.

Match with roast lamb with garlic and rosemary.