From £8.99 (until 5 Jan 2010), €69 (6 bottles)
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In the wake of our extensive review of Rhône 2008s, here's a great-value 2007 from the Cave St-Désirat that is ready for drinking now but won't mind waiting a little while. I was impressed by UK supermarket Waitrose's take on this wine, their own exclusive blend, and Jancis liked rival supermarket Sainsbury's very similar version of the wine, as well as having been particularly struck by the 2006 vintage when tasting for British Airways business class earlier this year.
To explain at the outset, there are at least two slightly different versions of this wine under the same name but with different labels, as is sometimes the case with wines made in larger volumes and sold through major retailers. UK supermarket Waitrose has its own blend (label above left) while Sainsbury's stocks the blend more generally available in Europe (label below right). The differences are minimal but I found the Waitrose version a little richer and fuller. At its usual price of £11.99, it's also more expensive, but a bargain at the December offer price of £8.99. (Apologies to those reading this outside the UK and Europe but this wine was too good not to include as a wine of the week.)
The Cave St-Désirat 2007 St-Joseph, 100% Syrah as the appellation requires, is the product of an excellent vintage, uncomplicated winemaking and careful selection. The vines have a respectable average age of 25 years and are planted on steep, mainly south-facing slopes on terraces supported by dry-stone walls. Soils are light: schist and gneiss over granitic bedrock. Yields are moderate: the maximum yield allowed for St-Joseph is 40 hl/ha, which represents around 1 kg of grapes per plant given the spacing on these terraces, but this maximum is rarely reached by the growers of the Cave St-Désirat co-operative. The grapes have to be harvested by hand on this terrain, the juice is fermented in stainless steel after four to five days' cool maceration and the wine is unoaked, delivering pure, unadulterated, refreshing northern Rhône Syrah fruit at a great price. It is lightly filtered but not fined.
My first impression of the wine, on a wet, gloomy day in London, was that it smelt indulgent yet there was also a pepperiness, a slight leafiness and a brightness that gave it an edge. That peppery freshness comes through on the palate as well and gives way to bright fruit, both red (raspberries) and black (bramble berries). Adding to the freshness and finesse is a mineral streak yet the aftertaste is long and smooth. The tannins are fine, dry, elegant and streamlined, a very good expression of the origin and the vintage. I found the acidity a little more noticeable on the finish of the Sainsbury's version, which Jancis described as 'succulent and inviting with no rough edges ... very much for food'. I agree about drinking this wine with food, whichever version you chance upon. This is not a wine made in small volumes. The Cave Saint-Désirat, a co-operative founded in 1960 and named after its home town in the St-Joseph region of the northern Rhône, about half-way between Vienne and Valence, makes a lot of wine – around 17,000 hectolitres per year. Its members farm 431 ha of vineyards in St-Joseph, which is about half of the entire appellation, and the Cave produces about 40% of the appellation's wine.
Which goes to show that it doesn't have to be niche to be good. For more great-value reds, see Jancis's Greatest buys – reds.
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