Co-op Irresistible Chilean Pinot Noir, Casablanca, Chile 2018 (£8, The Co-op) Few countries can compete with Chile when it comes to making wines under a tenner that are slightly better than they should be. In most shoppers’ minds this makes for a useful if not always exciting prospect: you will get a good dose of fruit, and the wine will taste of the variety printed on the label, and there will be no alarms and no surprises. If I sound like I’m damning with faint praise, I don’t mean to. After tasting literally thousands of supermarket wines in the past couple of weeks, many of them considerably less interesting than their price tag suggests, I can confirm that this ability of Chile’s is not to be sniffed at. And the best supermarket Chileans really do, as the marketers say, overdeliver, among them the Co-op’s alluringly pure and slinky cool-climate pinot noir which is a genuine bargain.
Pintao Reserva Carmenère, Colchagua Valley, Chile 2017 (£10, Marks & Spencer) The name behind the Co-op’s pinot is Viña Indomita, a producer that is coming close to cornering the market in the UK’s own-label Chilean supermarket wines. That’s not necessarily a bad thing: Indomita is also responsible for a couple of other of pound-for-pound overperformers at the Co-op (the exuberantly, joyously juicy Co-op Irresistible Bio Bio Valley Malbec 2017), Sainsbury’s (the succulent, polished, cassis-scented Taste the Difference Maipo Cabernet Sauvignon 2018; £9) and Morrisons (the racy, tingly, grassy dry white Zarper Sauvignon Blanc, Casablanca 2019; £8.25). Other producers bringing a bit of extra pizzazz to Chile’s supermarket game are giants Concha y Toro, responsible for the satisfyingly chunky, chewy, dark berry fruited and red-meat-requiring Tesco Finest Cauquenes Carignan 2015 (£10); and Viña Casa Silva, the people behind Marks & Spencer’s nicely balanced take on the country’s speciality variety carmenère, with its rustle of herbal notes, soy and dark curranty fruit.
Viñedos de Alcohuaz Grus, Elqui Valley, Chile 2016 (from £23.35, Connollys Wine; Bottle Apostle) The one problem with having a reputation for making good affordable wines: how do you find takers for your so-called fine wines – wines that might be great but can’t be done on the cheap, wines, for example, from remote vineyards produced at a small scale that requires labour- and cost-intensive care and attention? The answer according to many of the wine merchants I speak to is: with great difficulty. And that’s despite the fact that Chilean fine wine has become so much more interesting in the past couple of decades. Producers have explored new sites to the west along the coast and east into the mountains, to the cool of the south and the desert of the north. The result: bottles of the calibre of the vivid, pure, Rhône-like red blend Alcohuaz Grus, from high altitude in the northern Elqui Valley – although even this, while nobody’s idea of cheap, still conforms to the essential Chilean vinous virtue: value for money.
Follow David on Twitter @Daveydaibach
