SYRAH is from South East France. Despite being known to lots of wine lovers as Shiraz it has nothing to do with the ancient Persian town of the same name. DNA profiling has proven its French origins beyond doubt. It first made great wine in the northern part of the Rhône Valley and still does.

It’s the only red wine grape planted in the vineyards of Hermitage, Côte-Rôtie, Crozes-Hermitage, Saint-Joseph and Cornas. The most concentrated wine comes from sites sheltered from the biting north wind, the Mistral, which funnels down the narrow valley.

The best vineyards, including the great hill of Hermitage are south-facing sun traps, on thin, stony soils: granite, schist or occasionally, limestone; but even on the gravels of Crozes-Hermitage, which radiate on the flatter ground around the foot of Hermitage, Syrah is still capable of good things in the right hands and when nature plays fair.

The biggest pair of right hands in these parts is the Cave de Tain, the Co-operative Cellars, whose winery sits right beneath Hermitage itself. They make about half of all Crozes-Hermitage, the biggest appellation in the region, have a lion’s share of Hermitage itself and are well represented across the river in Saint-Joseph, Cornas and its neighbour Saint-Péray, a small appellation just for dry white wine and surprisingly chunky fizz.

The Cave de Tain was founded in 1933 and now has 310 members who grow grapes, and who between them own around a thousand hectares of vines. A generation ago, there were well over 500 members. Over the years some estates have amalgamated and others have broken away to do their own thing, yet the Tain Co-op remains an impressive, well-run and highly-respected operation.

When I last paid a visit, on a cloudless day early last summer, everything was as spick, span and spotless as usual.

This goes hand in glove with one of the things I like most about the Cave de Tain: they don’t rest on their laurels. They always seem to be trying to improve things to make even better wine. Three recent projects show their commitment to quality and innovation.

The first is that, like so many other wine businesses, they have a firm commitment to sustainability; but they go further than most. As well as the usual steps to recycle waste products, especially water, and to reduce their carbon footprint, their passion for biodiversity even extends to installing a beehive on the cellar roof. I’m not sure who gets to enjoy the honey – I didn’t notice jars of their own honey on sale in the winery shop. They are also converting the vineyards they own outright to an organic regime and will soon release their first wine from organically certified grapes. And on the steep slopes of Hermitage they have chosen to work as much of the land as they can with horses in order not to compact the soil.

Their second major commitment is to research on the health of the Syrah grape on which they depend so much.

In particular, this means co-operating with scientists around the world to try and find a solution to a viral infection, sometimes called ‘Syrah Decline’ which attacks and kills the vines. It’s a little-known problem, but can be serious and affects even the best-kept vineyards. Their aim is breed a disease-resistant strain of the variety, at the same time maintaining a heritage vineyard to ensure that the best clones of Northern Rhône vine varieties are protected.