Winemaker Notes
Pair Carmenére with dishes such as rabbit or four-cheese pasta with grated truffles. Lapostolle Cuvée Alexandre Carmenére can be cellared for several years.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
This bottling is quite consistent in quality and shows excellent balance. Fruitier than many previous vintages, with fine-grained tannins, juicy fruit and a lengthy finish. Drink now or hold.
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Vinous
The 2023 Carménère Cuvée Alexandre Lapostolle is 89% Carménère, 6% Syrah and 5% Cabernet Sauvignon, all from Apalta. This aged for 13 months in second- and third-use 225-liter French oak barrels. It opens with red fruit, plum and ripe blackberry, with soft oak and gentle spice. What stands out is the restrained palate—elegant and finely grippy with a subtle cling, delivering the finesse of Chile in a warm year. Delicate pyrazines appear on the finish.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Containing 6% Syrah and 5% Cabernet Sauvignon, the 2023 Cuvée Alexandre Carmenère introduces itself with a dark-fruited, plummy nose with a subtle herbal tint and graphite flourishes. The palate is lush yet silky and streamlined in profile, concluding with a long, elegantly structured finish of delineated tannins.
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Wine Spectator
Lively and fruit-driven in style, with paprika accents to the ripe black cherry and plum core, plus mineral twinges that fold in on the finish. Drink now. 4,500 cases made, 1,200 cases imported.
Lapostolle was founded in 1994 by Alexandra Marnier Lapostolle and her husband Cyril de Bournet upon their discovery of a unique clos in the Apalta Valley sheltering 100-year-old pre-phylloxera vines. They quickly realized its potential for producing world-class wines and embarked on their family’s next chapter in the New World. Alexandra brought generations of French winemaking tradition and expertise to the rugged landscape of the Colchagua Valley.
Today, Charles de Bournet, the seventh generation, leads the winery in its newest chapter of innovation, punctuated by the official recognition of the Apalta DO in 2018. Together with Andrea León, Technical Director & Winemaker, Lapostolle continue to craft wines that honor the winery’s credo: French in essence, Chilean by birth.
Dark, full-bodied and herbaceous with a spicy kick, Carménère found great success with its move to Chile in the mid-19th century. However, the variety went a bit undercover until 1994 when many plantings previously thought to be Merlot, were profiled as Carménère. Somm Secret— Carménère is both a progeny and a great-grandchild of the similarly flavored Cabernet Franc.
Well-regarded for intense and exceptionally high quality red wines, the Colchagua Valley is situated in the southern part of Chile’s Rapel Valley, with many of the best vineyards lying in the foothills of the Coastal Range.
Heavy French investment and cutting-edge technology in both the vineyard and the winery has been a boon to the local viticultural industry, which already laid claim to ancient vines and a textbook Mediterranean climate.
The warm, dry growing season in the Colchagua Valley favors robust reds made from Cabernet Sauvignon, Carmenère, Malbec and Syrah—in fact, some of Chile’s very best are made here. A small amount of good white wine is produced from Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc.