Winemaker Notes
NOSE: Exuberant and complex, with red and black fruit such as plums, black cherries combined with currant, berries, dry figs with black cocoa and a violet touch. Sweet spices like clover and vanilla give an elegant touch towards the finish.
MOUTH: Well balanced, an elegant wine which has a bright attack followed by round, velvety and polished tannins filling the mid palate and a rich long lasting finish.
SERVICE AND PAIRING: Decant for 3 hours and enjoy at room temperature. Ideal companion for game, lamb, and entrecote fillet. Also good with rich cocoa chocolate desserts.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
This was the Wine of the Year for the Wine Spectator in 2008 and I voted for it! Full body, fresh and focused with gorgeous fruit and and spices. Such transparency. So very young now. A blend of 42% carmenere, 28% cabernet sauvignon, 26% merlot and 4% petit Verdot
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Wine Spectator
Wine of the Year
#1 Wine Spectator Top 100 of 2008Since its outstanding debut 1997 vintage, Casa Lapostolle's Clos Apalta bottling has helped to establish Chile as a premier red-wine region. Owner Alexandra Marnier-Lapostolle and her team created a blend of Chile's distinctive Carmenère variety, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon sourced from the estate's oldest vines in Colchagua's Apalta sub-valley, then kept refining: fermenting in smaller lots, hand-destemming berries and constructing a gravity-flow winery. All this came to fruition in the long, warm, dry 2005 vintage, easily Chile's modern best. Marnier and new winemaker Jacques Begarie blended in 4 percent Petit Verdot for the first time, adding aroma and color. Rich and velvety, the 2005 Clos Apalta should reward cellaring. The wine's price has remained relatively modest through the years.
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Wine Enthusiast
Clos Apalta continues to push the envelope for Chilean icon wines. It’s always been a blend of four or five Bordeaux grapes, and the 2005 is every bit as structured, tight and ripe as any predecessor. There is an intense blanket of new oak that tastes of mint, cinnamon, sawdust and black licorice. When that subsides (maybe in another 12 months), expect racy and complex berry flavors, pinpoint tannins and preserving acidity. Hold for another two years; then drink through 2014.
Clos Apalta is a state-of-the-art winery built to amplify Apalta's unique terroir through a lens of legendary French winemaking expertise. Under the watchful eye of Charles-Henri de Bournet and winemaker Andrea Leon, Clos Apalta remains among South America's most iconic producers.
The revolutionary six-story winery is built into the granite hillside of 'The Clos' in the proportions of the Golden Ratio, representing perfect natural equilibrium. In this way, the winery itself is an element of their minimal-intervention winemaking philosophy: hand harvesting, gentle extraction, wild yeast fermentation, minimal filtration, and 100% gravity-fed from the sorting table to the cellar.
“My mother, Alexandra Marnier Lapostolle, always dreamt of crafting the perfect wine. She spent years in search of an exceptional terroir to create a unique wine which would come to take its place as one of the best in the world. Having crossed several continents, she found the picture-perfect location of the Apalta Valley. She let the rolling mountains and sunlit air of the Apalta Valley speak to her, guessed the extraordinary potential, and tamed it. Clos Apalta was thus born, an enchanting wine with a shimmering texture and complexity that stimulates the senses and excites the imagination.” - Charles-Henri de Bournet
One of the world’s most classic and popular styles of red wine, Bordeaux-inspired blends have spread from their homeland in France to nearly every corner of the New World. Typically based on either Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot and supported by Cabernet Franc, Malbec and Petit Verdot, the best of these are densely hued, fragrant, full of fruit and boast a structure that begs for cellar time. Somm Secret—Blends from Bordeaux are generally earthier compared to those from the New World, which tend to be fruit-dominant.
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.