Five years ago, when we were first coming up with names for our wines, I floated the idea of having different names for all the wines. A somewhat controversial idea, since few other Chilean wineries do it, and it makes things more complicated. But we went for it, in order to set us apart from the crowd. It worked, I think, although the reservations we had about it making our lives complicated turned out to be true. However, we only had one name—Tobiano—for all our “second label” wines, because we initially thought they would be kind of a revolving door; in other words, there may not always be a Tobiano Pinot and a Tobiano Syrah at the same time, and some years there would not be any Tobiano at all. Well, it turns out that there is almost always some of each, and because we gave the upper tier wines individual names, it started to become apparent that the second tier ought to have individual names also. May as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, as they say. So Lucero, which means a star-like marking on a horse, is the new Tobiano Syrah.

The 2007 wines were, across the board, some of the most intense, concentrated, low-yielding wines we have ever made. The red wines will be slower to show themselves, and are a bit more shy at this stage than the 2006 wines were in their youth.

Definitely decant the 07 Lucero to let it breathe a bit—it is a surprisingly serious wine, deeply colored and very concentrated. It has the same hallmark meat and smoke characters on top of black fruits with a firm backbone of acidity that all the Syrahs from the Kingston vineyard display, just more of it than usual.