Winemaker Notes
Rich and dark inked purple red. Very expressive nose with the typical expression coming from our old Carmenère grapes from Apalta. Ripe aromas of black fruit, wild berries combined with rich mocha, vanilla and delicate touches of sage and white sweet spices. It opens with concentrated and velvety tannins towards a juicy mid palate and a long lasting finish. Alive in the mid palate with good acidity and soft, elegant yet concentrated structure. Very long finish full of more fruit flavors.
Decant minimum 1 hour ahead 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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Wine Spectator
Ripe and packed, especially for the vintage, with gorgeous blackberry, blueberry and fig fruit flavors liberally laced with bittersweet cocoa and Turkish coffee notes. Muscular but rounded, with briar and mineral notes buried deep on the fleshy finish. An impressive combination of density and purity. Carmenère, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Petit Verdot. Best from 2010 through 2016.
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James Suckling
The density and focus is impressive with such dark fruit and black olive character, Full body, velvety tannins. Juicy and decadent. Such beauty and focus. A blend of 43%carmenere, 21% cabernet sauvignon, 30% merlot and 6% petit verdot
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Wine Enthusiast
Once again, Clos Apalta distinguishes itself as one of Chile’s best wines. The bouquet is dark and slightly minty, with licorice, shoe polish and ripe, herb-tinged black fruit. Saturated and deep in the mouth, with cola, cassis, black cherry and blackberry flavors. Chewy wine; still has some oak to resolve. Best from 2011.
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Wine & Spirits
Lapostolle and Michel Rolland pioneered this warm, voluptuous style of wine from Colchagua, a blend of old-vine carmenère, merlot and cabernet sauvignon. The long and dry 2006 season offers a luscious Clos Apalta of ample texture and generous blackberry and chocolate flavors, conveying the sensuality of a woman painted by Rubens. It's easy to enjoy now with pork chops, and will gain complexity with five years in the cellar.
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.